Doll Festival Fan Art Contest Winners Selected! (03/27/2008)

[Ansems]

Wow this year's art is great.

Go go DNC AF.

[LD]

The mithra pld using cover wins in my mind. The composition is striking and dramatic, the pallet is gorgeous, and the figures are ridiculously well drawn. I'm pretty disappointed that a boring anime cliche won. Most of those pictures were: Random Character in Random Situation, Standing Around. Very uninspiring. The cover picture was a diamond in the rough.

If you're saying the winner is bad because it's an over-used cliche, I think you're being a bit of a hypocrite by supporting "Blue Knight", but I do agree it's one of the better pieces, despite it being a contrivance verging on triteness.

"Feline Females in the Field" is good because it has a lot going on at once and each situation has its own story that is connected to the whole, but can also have its own self-contained ramifications. It's a humorous take on what can happen in battle, so it blends comedy with something we can all relate to (SNAFU). Compare it to the other winners, and you'll see it's very much different from the rest in that it's not a portrait, something showcasing a person or people, it's a scene, the focus of which is the situation rather than the individual characters.

We're all entitled to our opinions, but you have to see things for what they are sometimes.


Also, the chick in the dancer AF pic looks like a 12 year old boy with an expression so blank, I'd question the wisdom of letting him around my livestock. I really don't see the appeal besides the great detail, and the other winners also have that in spades.

Finally, everything Gulk does is pure fucking gold. .........no pun intended.

[Kimiko]

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/top...imgs/im016.jpg

Anyone wanna take a stab at enlarging this to wallpaper size (preferably 1600x1200?)

[Gunslinger]

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/796/82319561wp1.jpg

There you go; it's too bad there isn't a larger sample source image (it doesn't look great... but it's nearly 3 times the size or the original). I did all I could to get the right amount of blur / sharp (despeckle, took it up, sharpened, then down). Anyway, looks alright if you want this on your background. Personally I’d size it a bit smaller to get a better resolution and white frame it.

Sampling it down on a smaller monitor would probably make it look better too.

[Indalecia]

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/top...imgs/im025.jpg

Me eventually!!

[Kimiko]

I took a few of the ideas you had noted down on the resizing and tried a couple additional steps. I think overall it came out pretty well. Lemme know what you think.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/417/ ... st2it3.jpg

[chi]

Good stuff this year.

[Gunslinger]

Looks pretty good Kimiko, better than the one I did I think

The problem with any enlargement is that you really have to balance the blur / sharpness to your preference, which means it's going to be different for everyone's "ideal" enlargement. That said, I'd use yours

[VZX]

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/top...imgs/im002.jpg

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/1...5514ow5.th.jpg
Similar face is similar

[chi]

That entire style of drawing never changes facial expressions.

[Dreampainter]

I was really a fan of the dancer AF painting until I looked at it from a distance. The values on the skin of the female should have been darker because they are too close to the values in the moon. If you remove those two lines that seperate it from the moon, or stand back about 10 feet away from it, the female looks like she is a floating head and bust with lower body but the torso disappears. When I first saw the thumbnail I had to stare a while to understand it (and I thought they were simese (sp?) twin dancers joined at the back. Everything else about it was great, but the lack of clarity on the body probably was the thing that sealed it at 2nd place instead of first.

They may have liked first place because it resembled miyizaki's style of watercolor works.

[vagus]

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/top...imgs/im002.jpg


My personal favorite. Aww yeah DNC AF.

This should have been the winner.

Lots of amazing drawings! No matter the skill, i love seeing FFXI drawings. KEep up the good work everyone!

[Elcura]

One of the things I loved most about FFXI were the armour details. Amazing attention to detail in all the pics shown, wish I had that kind of patience.

[Jkun]

One of the things I loved most about FFXI were the armour details. Amazing attention to detail in all the pics shown, wish I had that kind of patience.

Oh god seconded. I get so fkin lazy when drawing armor. Then again I spend like 10 mins max on pencilling before inking cuz I really can't be arsed when I know I'm gonna edit it in PShop eventually.

[Priran]

imghttp://www.playonline.com/ff11us/topics/fanart/imgs/im002.jpg/img


My personal favorite. Aww yeah DNC AF.

This should have been the winner.

For a second there I thought the two people were sharing a torso.

[chi]

I was really a fan of the dancer AF painting until I looked at it from a distance. The values on the skin of the female should have been darker because they are too close to the values in the moon. If you remove those two lines that seperate it from the moon, or stand back about 10 feet away from it, the female looks like she is a floating head and bust with lower body but the torso disappears. When I first saw the thumbnail I had to stare a while to understand it (and I thought they were simese (sp?) twin dancers joined at the back. Everything else about it was great, but the lack of clarity on the body probably was the thing that sealed it at 2nd place instead of first.

They may have liked first place because it resembled miyizaki's style of watercolor works.

The skintone being the same as the moon could be a desirable effect, but my real problem with the dancer pic was that when I first looked at it, I was kinda confused about what was going on. I didn't realize that it was two people at first. If I had to change the values, it would be making the elvaan male a little darker so he looks less like a giant tumor.

Ideally though... just push the layers a little further apart. The costumes are too similar to smash them together.

Also, that "moon" could just as easily be some sort of spotlight... and probably is.

[Charismatic]

You people need new eyes.
It's easy to tell it's two people and that's not an Elvaan male, that's a Hume. Sheesh.

[Elcura]

You people need new eyes.

Seriously.

[Dreampainter]

well its all about clarity and a good read on the image beside all that other stuff, like render ability and technique (style). At pixar after a piece of concept art has been completed they hold it back about 50 feet in the hallway, and if you can still read the image from that distance its good on clarity. With the second place entry, the clarity is a little comprimised at a distance because that frail little line on the torso is not going to hold at a distance. I think everyone understood that there were 2 dancers, but weather or not they are sharing a spine is questionable at the first read.