EOW #200 A Long Journey Ahead - SPECIAL ROUND!

[Vulgar`]

TOPIC: A Long Journey Ahead

Topic Brief: For this special round, you can interpret this topic pretty widely. Imagine that you are a traveler and you are gazing out over a vast desert horizon, or standing atop a snow mountain and surveying the treacherous path set before you by nature. Think about this topic openly and broadly. Focus on the sense of having a long journey ahead of you and let your spirit guide you to whatever destination awaits you.

Firstly, the winning entry will be put on the new banner of EOW! It’s time for a change since the old one needs updating, and so the winners’ art will become the face of EOW for another 100 rounds!

Secondly, there will be prizes! Awesome prizes at that too. (they haven’t been confirmed yet, but cross your fingers)

Prizes:

For this very special round of EOW there will be prizes beyond the mere honor of winning the poll! Jason and MB have been so good as to provide the following prizes:

1st Place:
- A ticket for the next Massive Black Workshop (or for any workshop really, to be used only once though).
- Downloads of all Massive Black and CA Tutorial and Instructional DVD’s
- An art book of your choice off of any internet seller (Must be $50 USD or less, bought and paid for by yours truly!)

2nd Place:
- Downloads of up to 6 Massive Black and CA Tutorial and Instructional DVD’s.

3rd Place:
- Downloads of up to 2 Massive Black and CA Tutorial and Instructional DVD’s.


DEADLINE: Friday, 21 December
Yes, this will be a month long contest instead of the normal two weeks.

[Vulgar`]

200 Rounds. Over 2800 environments!

Hey environment designers, I wanted to show some love to all the amazing artists that have contributed to Environment of the Week over the years. Here are some statistics and recognition for EOWers with the most wins!

(thanks to Si_Swe from COW for the idea for this)
Note: If you have any corrections to make, please feel free to notify me via PM, I'll see what I can do about getting those corrections made.

General Statistics:
Total number of entries: 2,817
Total number of votes: 11,848
Most votes in one round: (E.O.W. #56 Floating Bazaar) 118 votes

Largest number of entries in one round:
(E.O.W. #180 Arctic Desert Shipwreck) - 40 entries, (E.O.W: Deep) 40 entries


Most winning entries:
Gaius - 14
Corrick - 10
Hideyoshi - 8
UnidColor - 5
albino-Z - 5


Moderator Terms:
Form: 001-004 (October 2005 - November 2005)
Red_Rook with assistance from Fozzybar: 005-031 (November 2005 - August 2006)
Hyver: 032-041 (August 2006 - November 2006)
Oblio: 042 (November 2006)
Vulgar: 043 (January 2007)
Chaosrocks: 044-150 (January 2007 - October 2010)
Vulgar: 150- (November 2010 - present day)


Mods’ Choice Awards:
I wanted to have a little category to give a small nod to my favorite winning entries. These are my top five (and they weren’t easy choices)

1. E.O.W. #92 - Spaceship Crashsite - /ev
2. E.O.W. #32 - Ruined Shipyard - Stokes
3. E.O.W. #51 - Sacred Grove of the Machinae - ATAnderson
4. E.O.W. #01 - Titan Fortress - ecsdesign
5. E.O.W. #182 - Death’s Lobby - albino-Z

[hekatoncheir]

Not anything particularly substantive but Vulgar, omg have my feels. Because everything is beautiful and amazing and perfect, and it's partly because of your awesomeness.

There also better be 10+ pages on this.

[vibhas_virwani]

OMG !!! everyone outta-mah-way !!!

[takashmen]

holy sh*t, you gave us a month
I feel it's gonna be legen wait for it dary!!!
and the prizes, men...

[jamsession]

wohooo! i'm as excited as a literal traveler *dances around* :D

[Mooglesarelittle]

GAME ON

[Pixeltuner]

Very nice, and thx to Vulgar for always making this a joy ^_^ Now let's get crackin'.

[siiilon]

Holly cow, let's rock dudes!

[Pixeltuner]

And here's my patented thumbnail sheet. Tons of ideas and directions to go

^_^

[I-Bomb]

The free dvds and downloads is what brought me here GAME ON

[Chris Sanders]

Come on guys and gals, lets push this round so hard there still talking about it in the next 100 rounds! I'm not even bothered about the prizes, that banner slot would have been enough!

P.s - those thumbs are sick pixel, how conscious of what your doing are thumbing; are you molding a scene or are you just throwing shapes down and moving on? I ask because i capitally suck at thumb nailing. thanks.

[Pixeltuner]

Chris: The first part is very random, I paint all the 'windows' at the same time with large custom brushes, I then slap on some texture for suggested detail. From then on it's just like looking at clouds and trying to see things and mold the little windows into somewhat useful and interesting compositions.

I've a vid of this working method here if you're interested: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthr...vid-inside-_-)

[Syle]

It's on like Donkey Kong hitting a salad tong shaped bong!

[Yatzenty]

Alright fellas, this time no 2-3h brush stroking...I'm gonna push that one hard. Great prizes and awesome timing, at least for me! Game on as Udonhead said

[lancer_idenoure]

sounds like this is gonna be an awesome round got a ton of work to finish up for school but im gonna try to hop in on this

have some tasty music to get things goin

[Pixeltuner]

Took one of the thumbs to the next level. Figured I kind of wanted a bit of story in this. Offering to the great tree before embarking on a big journey.

[MishaArt]

omg pixel it allready looks fantastic!

[Lewis]

Was already getting excited for a new EOW, but this exceeds all my expectations! Good luck everyone!

[takashmen]

something to start with

rough compo, the idea behind -> three equal spaceships traveling through
giant wood
or abandoned city
or is it a start of space float, supported by ceremony and all is taking place in heavy rain
or the ships are approaching edge of disc world

so many ideas, need to provide more thumbs for that

one thing is certain I want to contrast detailed foreground dominate with big structures with empty landscape showing a long journey ahead

is there any of this ideas convincing for you?

[kingkostas]

pixeltuner-mate love the thumbnails. Keep up the great work
takashmen- You can go with whatever you want, i think we must find a compo that will enchance the depth anyway[so even the elements inside should enchance that]

Here i played a lot with pespective till i made this scene. We have plenty of time so i will see how i will go on with it, i may find something more interesting later.
thats gonna be great

[jamsession]

and a couple of rough sketches from me. i havta work haaaard :/


...


thumbs up for everyone :D

[Vatsel]

[Pixeltuner]

Vatsel: looking good, 1,2, and 3 are pretty much the same composition though. You might want to try some more different comps.

[l'Aria]

kingkostas: Looking great already!


Two travelling warriors seek the blessing of the gods before they depart on their epic journey

[jamsession]

a couple of thumbs for a diff. idea. i decided to grow bolder with brush opacity and changed the brush. i also need to ditch the value killer low contrast and the reluctance with colors heheh.

[mhindman]

Long-time lurker, finally getting my proverbial feet wet here on CA by participating in EOW. Nice to meet you!


Pixeltuner: Love your thumbnailing method; tried it myself and got a lot out of it. Also, loving the direction you're heading in!

kingkostas: Great start. I think the line of towers (?) along the horizon is a great touch, really helps emphasize the depth/vastness of the view.

jamsession: Liking your second set of sketches more than first (great job with the bolder colors/better contrast!); I think the lone boat provides a really interesting narrative that you should continue pursuing.

Vastel: Love the caravans; definitely get a sense of "journey" from your thumbnails. 2 & 3 are my favs; think I like the colors in 3 better, but that's probably personal preference.

l'Aria: Loving the use of light. Keep going!


Here are my current roughs. Ridiculously tall/never-ending tower idea inspired by dungeon-crawling games. Playing around with the idea of a figure in the foreground and mood. Still gathering ideas for the actual design of the tower. (Also, it took everything in me to not do desert scenes with a big mountain in the distance, because omg I love Journey)

[NickyBeats]

i tried thumbnailing using pixeltuner's method sort of, this is pretty neat for some ideas that you wouldnt normally have thought of...

still have to work the bottom half up more though...

[I-Bomb]

hmm I might have to try that method soon but for now I have this sketch at the moment


still thinking of a story

[Pixeltuner]

Stealing mah tricks! But yeah, it's a really good method for getting cool comps and generating ideas you normally wouldn't think of in the first place. ^_^ And you get to use those weird brushes you never use in a practical sense

Also Nicky: I would watch for using too much photostuff in the early stage because it can steer your image too early on when you're just looking for comps and suggesting shapes. But that's just a personal pref