This is a spin-off of the original GFX Art Battle, but with some updated rules and changes. Please make sure to read the rules before entering, since they have been modified. Good luck, we look forward to seeing some creative artistic entries!
Competition Rules 1. Must be hand drawn, either on paper or in a program. It can then be manipulated in an graphics program. But unoriginal artwork cannot be used as the main focus. Copyrighted images cannot be used. All pieces containing copyrighted images will be disqualified. 2. Submissions must follow the current theme that has been chosen by a moderator for that week. If you submit more than one piece, please clarify which one you would like to be judged. 3. If your image is larger than 600 pixels wide, please provide a link to the image instead of posting it in the forum. Otherwise, the image will be cut off. 4. Artists cannot win in subsequent weeks. You can still submit, but if you won the week before, you cannot get first place again the next week. 5. After the deadline, a moderator will pick the winner, and they will be awarded a 25 AP award.
Owned. Haha. Zoph, is it a new high school, or are you in college now?
I think it's high school level... Yeah, I think it is.
Zophia, not before I have seen you do the thing you are supposed to do besides being a mod, I do not believe you should be the judge here. You might have the idea that then you do not need to draw anything, which is good, but I still think you would end up failing. Sorry, but that is what I think.
True, and we both know it is. I always end up taking on more than I can handle, I dunno why. Some day I'll learn, I hope.... Oh, and... I wouldn't take the position as judge to not have to draw something. I didn't make an entry last week, no one complained over that, why would I feel I need to make one in any other round...
*withdraws comment to Zophia, mumbles something about being evil or bad or something, crawls away*
*follows, picks up and hugs*
You best withdraw that comment to Zoph. She is perfectly capable of judging this competition.
Capable, yup. Responsible, hmm. Could be, maybe, who knows.
Well, I'll ignore bad-mooding people long enough to do the judgement (yes, Cholokid, I use UK spelling so suck it up :P)
I seem to have a knack for picking difficult themes. New Year's Resolutions is definitely not easy to convey as you have to somehow convey the notion of a date-specific promise within a picture...needless to say that many resorted to captions. Points in this round went to off-the-wall approaches (within reasonable limit), and I will be (again) the first to admit that my arbitration of this round will never be perfect or even close to it.
That said, I remember that since last time, neither Cholokid nor Crimsonblade have received their merit. I'll deal with that in a moment, but as I said before, what I ended up doing was leaving both their entries elegible to win this week despite being shown in the Champion's Exhibit.
Cholokid:
I thought this was hilarious actually, definitely off-the-wall and fresh. And the "eh" made me lol.
No, cholokid, I will not exhibit your inappropriate reference entry :P
Crimsonblade55:
Being familiar with Crimson's projects, I understood the meaning behind the image, and I liked the eye colour touches. However I do believe there is a more effective way of portraying the rivalry here, as frequently shown in comics...as due to the colour scheme I found myself thinking that the rivalry was Ps VS Fl...and then I did a doubletake and thought wait, no, that's not what Crimson meant!
And now...the judgement!
This is going to be awkward. Because I in fact decided after much thought that the Grand Winner of this week would be Cholokid!
So what I decided to do retrospectively was to give both Crimsonblade55 and Cholokid merits- one for each week. I told you it was dodgy but I'm seriously not doing this just to make up the numbers or something, mkay?
In stark contrast, we go from the irreverence of Cholo and his perennially provocative humour, to pessimism and pathos.
Second Place: Cenere- Last Glass
This works at being clever and abstract, conveying the message without words. The dark and bleak hues are offset by the evidence of festivities, giving the piece a very noir feel.
In a similar thematic vein to this, though somewhat more blatantly angsty is Zophia's entry, Broken Promises:
Will a New Year's Resolution as opposed to an empty promise be enough? Stay tuned to find out.
Also, I have elected to be enigmatic at this point. Does this mean I am awarding Cenere and Zophia joint second place this round? Or am I not?
I will leave that to you to decide.
Third Place: Gantic- A Freudian Interpretation of New Years' Resolutions
I thought about this one very very hard indeed. I contemplated removing it from judgement altogether and making part of its own category. I contemplated disqualifying Gantic for making something that made me think too hard (actually, this time I'm kidding :P)
In the end I elected to give it Third because it was too clever (a little "whole is less than the sum of parts" but I ultimately had one of those "there is no secret ingredient" moments (which renders the former statement redundant). I still haven't figured out what the keyboard code is, though. I'm not sure I need to know.
As you are now well familiar with, I like to poke fun at all the other entries at this point in pretty much the order they were submitted. So that's what I'm going to do now :P
The Why does Pacman have legs and arms anyway? award goes to Fst6 (as usual, because he likes to draw Pacman. With arms and legs.)
This is also a reference to that VGcats strip I posted last week...heh. I'm not linking again because it's definitely inappropriate for this site, hahahaaaaa 8D
The I Swear I'll Get Around to it...Eventually...Not collective consists of:
Jalex13, who gets bonus points for submitting something entirely hand-drawn.
Kevin44, whose resolution boils down to growing up but since in reality some of us never really grow up...
Then there is the Why Didn't I Take a Swipe at Those Banner Ads Sooner award, which went to Deth4
Turns out that nobody else took a swipe at the Zwinky ads, so you could have gotten away with that also :P
And last, but not least, the category that seems awfully close to but definitely is not a Dishonorable Mention...the Things That Made Me Say Huh:
Gameingkid
Like wow, dude, it was pretty whacky without the explanation and in a way I prefer it because bulimia and anorexia is a pretty sensitive topic!
Moo.
:P
Alright guys, that's a wrap for now! I'm aware that what is going to happen to the competition next will be a bit of a mystery...so I'll explain the situation as I see it in the next post.
Alright guys, since I am leaving and will not be on much for the next three weeks, I am no longer going to be the judge of the Art Contest. Furthermore, I believe that I will no longer be in a position to be the judge and therefore this is an indefinite resignation, not a sabbatical.
I had a lot of fun with the contests and I'm sure that many of you did as well. Without all your participation and enthusiasm a thread like this simply does not survive, so that it has been regularly updated and revamped and rewritten and still goes strong is a testament to the kind of community spirit that works here, as well as the personalities that contribute.
The reason I do not wish to do the judging in future is because, well, judges experience burnout. I tried to do the absolute best job that I could with this competition which meant spending up to half a day thinking about and writing up those big long commentaries you've become accustomed to seeing over the past 3 months. I know there have been people who always understand but I feel that most of you, since this is a forum, forget at one point or another that each person has a life (and I would assert I have more to do than most of you), and every now and then boils down to expecting a little more than I can give. Because I happened to give you people something to expect, and that is natural.
Each of you may not have done this much if at all but eventually it adds up. You have every right to expect that if I declare a deadline that I'd stick to it, and since I haven't done this for a while because writing those posts takes at least 2 hours straight, at the very least, it became a matter of either copping out or waiting for a time when I actually have 2 hours free, which is not often. At this point I will admit that previously I have procrastinated, but to be continually accused of procrastination when this is no longer applicable is highly irritating, and worse when people should already know better.
I can no longer fulfill the expectations I've generated and I'm tired of disappointing people, or giving people an excuse to take bad moods out on me. This isn't a personal rant, either. This is a warning to any person who wishes to take up the role, if they want to take it seriously or if they don't care about what people think.
I also understand that there is some...complication about who should be the next judge. Previously I took up the post as Carlie was no longer able to judge it. I hope you were all aware that I'm not the one who should be picking the next judge. This is a community event done on a voluntary basis, so the next person to step up to the plate would do well to keep all the above in mind. I've already outlined the challenges that you will expect or maybe were not aware of or simply forgot/ignored. What happens next is up to you.
I may or may not contribute as a competitor in the future, but most likely not until I have completed Cenere's MWT, and that will likely take a long time.
I think you'd be a good judge, but you'd probably also get a bit more stressed than you are already, and... Nah, that's all. I would approve of you as judge, if you wanted to...
Hmm. But we need to hear from the rest of the contestants, if there is anyone who want to take the job, and their oppinions on this. There is no reason to believe we could not all judge over time, make it a month at a time, but still, as Strop said, this is a hard job, and people really are venting their frustration, when the judgement is not in time. Sadly, I was one of them (I did apologize to him, though).
But the question is at the moment, who should be the next judge.