Chow 200 :: The MONARCH of CHOW :: FINALS

[daestwen]

NO ENTRIES PAST THIS POINT!

30 minute grace period, but if i have over 50 entries for the poll, you'll be cut out. Sorry!

edit: Don't worry Sork, since we posted at the same time, i'll count you before the cut-of.

Entries are still welcome, we're just already pretty close to full for the poll, so I can't guarantee anyone else will get in. There are already going to be cuts.

[Sorknes]

My Monarch is inspired of how the traditional and folk music here in Norway are finding ways into everything contemporary the last decade, especially metal and rock.

Great round! Good job everyone!

Sorknes, Conceptart, Characters, Photoshop.

Edit: Oh, darn, I must have been posting while you posted about the deadline Shit happens, I guess.

[Sentinel.]

Oh, hell! I was typing this up when you posted, Dae! Am I out?

I'm in the process of getting my WIPs together, I'll have them up in a minute!

Edit: I have my WIPs up now

Queen of Indie Rock

Is it strange for a person to want a Keytar as desperately as I do? There's a lot more grafitti on the wall I wanted to do, and it still needs a little work, but overall I'm really happy with it. Special thank you to Mark Tarrisse for crits and suggestions! Sorry I couldn't get it all in there

Christina Davis
Conceptart
Characters
Urban
Photoshop

[jpedro]

i realize this one is veeery late, but i wanted to post it nonetheless, since i much enjoyed working on this topic.

here's my Queen of Rock

[Raydiant]

Darn, I guess I'm late? :/

Anyway, here's my DJ Monarch of Chow. Good luck to all the entries!

[Angel Intheuk]

Waaay late.. enjoyed it anyway so just posting for crits if any

Good luck everyone who gets through!

Queen of Funk

[daestwen]

POLL IS UP!

Okay, obviously there were some cuts, as we had tons of entries and I had to get it down to 50. So we cut for naming and for those who had less than a 3/4 view of the character.

Out for naming:
Master Troglodyte
SoupAndButter
Tipa
MatKaminski
Danihel

Out for three quarters view:
Khallel
Refschaufscheik

[ManaBurn]

Wow what a tremendous waste of my time. You guys need to get your act together! How did we lose the extra 24 hours while I was at work? I would have just posted last night. What a joke.

[goldilockz]

Wow what a tremendous waste of my time. You guys need to get your act together! How did we lose the extra 24 hours while I was at work? I would have just posted last night. What a joke.

What do you mean? The deadline was originally 5pm Eastern time yesterday... but we got extended by 24 hours meaning the deadline was 5pm today. We didn't lose any extra time. They were right on time.

[APW]

AWWWWW! Quinn Simoes, Where was your King? I was going to vote for him.
Cptcrandall- I think yours was the best here with Pinback in second. Awesome work everyone!

[Cartogriffi]

I'd expect nothing else from such an excellent round but boy is it hard choosing favorites from those entries!

Overall I like IceMoon's Queen of Trance the most. I don't actually listen to Trance but there's something about the colors and the pose that really appeal to me. Of all of them I think that's the one that most felt like a future mascot as well. (But I'll still miss Medusa!)

[cptcrandall]

AWWWWW! Quinn Simoes, Where was your King? I was going to vote for him.
Cptcrandall- I think yours was the best here with Pinback in second. Awesome work everyone!

Wow! Thank you!

[zephyri]

Missile... I live the design hints to past eras and the framing of her. Voted cause I really liked the image, but I'd have probably been hard pressed to guess she was a queen of any kind of music.
Quinn Simoes. This is awesome character design. One of my favourite images as you adressed both parts of the brief (monarch and music). Love the fact the design hints are quite subtle too. Great colour and rendering on top.
Sakuranym: Probably my fave of the lot. Great design, I love your style and colour choices, a gorgeous image that had inspired me to try my own hand at a celtic queen, but I ran out of time :/.
No87: There's just enough hints in this to get at the idea of a monarch within the genre of music, and I love the pose.. she's got a load of character.
LeoListens. Great work at taking this to an entirely different level to most of the entries here, this got my vote for most unique, but it's a cracking piece of design and colour control. Love it!
Artina: You absolutely nailed regal on this. I voted mostly because I love the character, but again, I wish there'd been a little more of a hint as to his 'music' side of things (maybe something like hints of stage props/speakers etc in the background), but it wasn't quite enough to put me off voting.
Lianti: spent a while just looking at this one. Couldn't quite decide if I liked it or not, but in the end I think it fulfils the brief well, and the fact it caught my attention for such a span of time swung me into voting! He's kinda like what would happen if you took a renaissance-stlye lute player and plonked into a rock festival in modern times.
Brandozer: Awesome character design here, and another of my overall faves. Love the style, the colour usage, in a glimpse it's quite obvious what she is and the kind of character she possesses.

Couple of near misses for votes too:
Bendragon: I really liked your character design, but the image as a whole felt very busy, and the background distracts from the character.
Iviatt: Another great sense of design here, and your colours are lovely... I just felt she was lacking in the regal feeling.
Arthemis: I can't tell you how much I love this image... the colours, the style choice, the way the pixel blends with smoother rendering. Very skillfully done. But in the end if I'd looked at this image without the brief, aside from the small speaker to her left, there wasn't much in this that said music to me. She'd rock a queen of the 8bit consoles tho!


Also, Daest... is there a reason QueenGwenevere's image isn't in the poll? Or am I being blind? I really liked that image and wanted to vote for it!

[Pixeltuner]

Wow what a tremendous waste of my time. You guys need to get your act together! How did we lose the extra 24 hours while I was at work? I would have just posted last night. What a joke.

If you find this a waste of time because you're now not elligible to 'win' you're here for entirely wrong reasons.



Another thing: Although this is a queen round and all, I don't think any of these works (including mine) surpass or even comes close to Jessies reigning Queen, both in design and execution.

I miss a lot of regal qualities and just see a lot of musicians or the other way around with a too subtle reference to the music where it's just an anime girl. Sounds harsh maybe, but I can't be the only one thinking or noticing this.

[Refschaufscheik]

I was so sure I had asked about the 3/4 rule. How can the costume not be included?
I'd like to know for the next time...
- Refshaufscheik

P.S.: Where's Queen Gwenewere's entry?

[Martheart]

Another thing: Although this is a queen round and all, I don't think any of these works (including mine) surpass or even comes close to Jessies reigning Queen, both in design and execution.

I have to agree... I don't want to be negative, but where were all the "pros"? I was really looking forward to Aly's and Jessiebeans piece for instance... There are still a couple of really good ones, I really like Brandozer, Sakuranym and Sentinel. But this round doesn't feel any more spectacular than a regular Chow

[Aly Fell]

Wow what a tremendous waste of my time. You guys need to get your act together! How did we lose the extra 24 hours while I was at work? I would have just posted last night. What a joke.

I don't know what on EARTH you are banging on about Manaburn. You had a month plus a day extension to get one image done, how much time do you actually need? Lecturing us is going to get you short shrift round here!

As for 'standards' of art here, there are actually some fine pieces, but ChoW is not really about a showcase for pros., it's about getting better and honing your character skills. And people have other priorities from time to time. Jessi's last Queen was a great image and so deserved the title spot, but with respect to all, I don't care if the final piece is rendered to the nth degree and shines like a beacon of light, if it's a good concept then it deserves to win, so look at what we have here and vote for what you think is the best image/concept/character.

As for me, I had a finished piece, but as a mod I wait to see how the entries are going and only submit if it looks like there's space. The first priority for space in the poll is the entrants not the mods as far as I'm concerned.

Queen Gwenevere - I have no idea why you aren't there. I saved the image and resized it, so it should be. I'll look into it and get back to you.

[Aly Fell]

Queen Gwenevere - Your image wasn't in the Photobucket account where we store the resized pieces. I know what happened. I had a browser crash when I was saving them to Photobucket last night, yours obviously was the one that didn't get there. I'm sorry, I'll have a word with Daestwen about this but we are at 50 max images right now. Maybe there is something we can do.

[cptcrandall]

Wow! A lot of negativity! Get the good vibes flowing again. This is a badass art jam. There are a lot of good pieces out here. Just glad to be a part of my first CHOW and get some votes! Thanks all!!

[goldilockz]

Oh nooooo! A misvote! Recount! Recount! That sucks about Queen Gwenevere's entry

I voted for Brandozer. He far surpassed many of the entries, and even though I'm not a fan of Metal, I thought his design was amazing.

I already feel so honored to have three votes! Thank you!!!

[danihel]

I'm not exactly sure what was wrong with my naming can somebody explain it to me please?

[IVIATT]

For me it was between Sentinals Queen of Indie and Artemis 8bit Queen.
Both of them completely captured what the essense of their genre was. The means of creating the art was also an expression of the particular musical style.

I gave the edge to Sentinal because of the subtlety in which he/she captured the feeling of Indie. And not to mention Indie is, by its very nature, hard to categorize. But you did a great job. The graffitied crown on the wall speaks volumes about the character and Indie itself. Artistically, what really won me over was the deftness of the shadow notes against the light, both on the figure and the wall. Convincing yet subtly handled...She is simultaneously "Indi-fferent" yet regal at the same time. Awesome.

And great job to everyone who very obviously put in alot of thought and effort into their pieces! Keep it coming!

[ArtByManon]

Brandozer - because it filled the brief with kick ass monarchy!! What a woman - I liked the nod to a Frazzetta style female here too and the balance of the image and the drama and colours. Gorgeous.

However, I also loved....
Sakuranym - really beautiful and very regal.
Lodin - cheeky! Love the attitude.
Matt - gorgeous style, really love the hands, very rubenesque.

[Pixeltuner]

I think it's kinda funny how people interpret genres and how to portray them. I think Brandozer's image is a cliche filled metalposter, Sentinel's image doesn't spell indie for me at all but more like hipster electro80sindiepopcrap and Arthemis's 8-bit queen has a bit too much 16 or even 32-bit influences

[goldilockz]

I think it's kinda funny how people interpret genres and how to portray them. I think Brandozer's image is a cliche filled metalposter, Sentinel's image doesn't spell indie for me at all but more like hipster electro80sindiepopcrap and Arthemis's 8-bit queen has a bit too much 16 or even 32-bit influences

True, I see what you're saying. I think a lot of that can be left open to individual interpretation. For myself, I voted based on "regal presence" mixed with an obvious musical theme. It didn't necessarily have to be spot-on as far as its genre (just for my own opinion!), but I can absolutely understand how that can sway someone else's vote.

[danihel]

I think now i understand, the filename wasn't correct.
I see there is no room for metal retards like me in the chow

[Martheart]

Arthemis's 8-bit queen has a bit too much 16 or even 32-bit influences

Haha I know what you mean, I even painted a SNES in there. That's why I called her the "Queen of Bit" instead of 8bit, and made it into a tribute to old console game music. I love those tunes

[Refschaufscheik]

I def. think there are some great pieces! CourtlandWs piece got my vote - I think it has a more subtle royal feeling to it, which I really dig because it goes nicely with the environment. And it was an unusual concept

[Pixeltuner]

ChoW is not really about a showcase for pros., it's about getting better and honing your character skills.

I totally agree with that, but for me personally and please let nobody take offense in this: I'd rather see the pro's smacking my ass here showing off because it's something I can look up to and motivates me to try even harder. There's so much to learn from the big guns and it's one of the major reasons I'm doing these chow's. Seeing their sketches, wips etc. is very insightful and invaluable for guys like me.

[Pixeltuner]

Haha I know what you mean, I even painted a SNES in there. That's why I called her the "Queen of Bit" instead of 8bit, and made it into a tribute to old console game music. I love those tunes

QFT! Videogame-soundtracks rule my ringtones :p