CG-Hub

Taron's "Natives of the Lifeless Forest Challenge"

View Entries

Winners

Description

Whether in the brightest light of the day, the twilight or the dark, shivers run down our spine when we gaze into the lifeless remains of this foreboding forest world. Is it itself that is evil, or was it evil that took life away from it, left no rich color on any trees and no trace of moisture within the last of leaves? Regardless, that which dwells within is what truly crawls under our skin. It may be shocking, frightening, awkward or even sad. It may be lurking, stalking, goofy or simply dead. But one thing it is for sure: It's the Natives of the Lifeless Forest.

You may paint this fictive memory or build the world in three dimensions. You may borrow from old masters, but never without mention. You may never use photography to show your purest fantasy unless you need the reference to battle insecurity. Be sure to submerge yourself in this foreign place to share a real experience. But most of all release all fear so that it's all but fun!

For all those who can't handle my silly poetry

Create a dead forest and the creatures or creature that would be found in it.

What I'm looking for as judge

This challenge demands total creative purity, which means it all has to come from within you. Your spirit as an artist- or as a human being for that matter- is already a sum of all that you've seen and experienced. Make use solely of that! As long as you do not integrate any outside material (scans or photographs) you may use some references, but I'd love to push those, who like to rely on them into a new experience themselves. This challenge is not a source of income, but a presentation of yourself so don't battle to win, but rather enjoy to participate and experience. Although those prizes are seriously tempting, I know. Just know what you have to do to win...

Key aspects

Emotional power of the piece. Regardless as to what direction this may go, it should be strong. I'd rather see you leave less relevant aspects unfinished than to see a detail dazzling mega-work thingy that's left without feeling. Hone in on the sensation you want to produce in the audience!
 
Skill. Convincing substances, consistency in style, understanding of composition and overall confidence in the chosen forms and shapes contribute to the impression of skill. As long as the style benefits from it, you can clearly go wild with what ever is left merely suggested, so don't start to worry about that. The elements you want to deliver have to be convincing!
 
Originality. It has to be sincere, even if you were to decide on an homage, it has to come from your heart and soul as an artist. This will give the piece its strength!

Rules

First of all, it's not a mixed media competition, therefore in our case it all has to be digital in origin!
 
Image formats and resolutions. When the challenge is done, we will be compiling the entries along with Taron's thoughts and commentaries, as well as your process work, into a nice book that you will be able to purchase after the contest is complete. This means that your final images need to be in lossless format (Tiff, Targa, etc.) and high enough resolution for printing. This means keeping your images around 2,000 pixels average in each dimension or more. Of course higher res is always better if you can provide it. Low resolution images may be unprintable, so keep this in mind when you choose your resolution. For example, an ideal resolution of an 8x10 image is 300 dpi, or 2400x3000 pixels. For judging you may submit high quality .jpg files. We will have an FTP set up for you to send us your high res lossless files at the end of the challenge, along with your process work.
 
Deadlines. You may submit work at any time from the beginning of the challenge (Sept. 1) all the way up to the deadline, which is December 31. After December 31 we will no longer be accepting entries, there will be no exceptions for late entries so make sure you get it in on time.

Content. Environmental elements and creatures have same weight. Don't just make a creature without a stage!

Your work. It all has to be your own artwork, otherwise it would be disqualified. Normally I would've said that goes without saying, but I did find a guy once win an online challenge with a collage of all my images from my website! Can you imagine! And he won first place, too! Funny world...could've at least asked .

Process. Keep at least three to five stages of the progress for a potential "making of...". More is encouraged and if someone wants to cut little clips, why not. Wouldn't that be beautiful?

Digital painting. No direct use of photography or scans, regardless as to how little the element may be. Naturally you can use it as reference, but I strongly discourage that for this and most likely all of my challenges.

3D art. No scanned geometries, while you may use photographic textures, if you need, but I can't encourage too much either. It really all points toward originality and artistic understanding.

Who am I to have all these demands? Well, I'm Timur "Taron" Baysal, born and misguided in Germany until I found my true calling at age 4 I think. But then I began drawing and painting instead. When in 1984 the breakdance craze started to settle down again I got my first computer (Commodore 16), hurling me face forward into the world of programming, computer music and art. By the age 15 I knew enough about pixels to land my first professional jobs designing and illustrating for CBT applications, later multimedia presentations and advertising games. 1995 (I think) Newtek's Lightwave made it to Germany and I began developing my subdivision based modeling style. 1997 (I think) My first website went online, featuring aside from my characters the facial setups I created with bones and manual versions of what later became "muscle bones" in messiah:Animate. This eventually brought me to the USA in 1998, where I've stayed ever since working in visual effects companies on movies such as "Dogma", "Battlefield Earth", "Gothika" and many more in various positions from lead animator to head of R&D, developing the first fully digital fire in a Hollywood feature (RAHAAAH!). Finally in 2004 I joined pmG worldwide to help develop messiah:Studio and do related freelance work for yet more movies such as "Syriana" and "Ghost Rider" amongst a few independent films and shortfilms. My most recent project had been a 360 degree panoramic and stereoscope motion ride of an underwater world in the future (nutch, nutch).

By entering the challenge you acknowledge that you have read, understand and agree to the rules outlined below:

• Winners must have a valid mailing address in order to receive prizes.

• It is the sole responsibility of the sponsors of CGHUB.com contests to deliver the prizes to the winners. CGHUB.com can not be held responsible or liable for prizes that sponsors do not deliver or retract. 

• Entrants to the CGHUB.com challenges retain all rights to artwork submitted to the challenge, but agree to allow CGHUB.com to use the artwork submitted for the challenges for advertisments, articles, on the web or in print or video form.

• CGHUB.com reserves the right to cancel, extend or amend any part of the rules, prizes, or deadlines at any time.

Prizes

Confirmed Sponsors and their contributions (to date) in alphabetical order

3D World Magazine
-1 yr paid subscription to 3D World Magazine
-This will go to the top winner in the 3D category

e-on software
-2 Vue 6 Infinite (a $695 value each)
-1 Vue 6 Pro Studio (a $399 value)

Nevercenter
-3 licenses of Silo 2.1 Professional
-These will go to the 3 winners in the 3D category

Pixologic
-2 licenses (Win/Mac) with a free upgrade to the next version ZBrush 3.5
-2 books on ZBrush, one from Scott Spencer and the other one from Eric Keller
-These will go to the first and second place winners in the 3D category.

Softimage
-1 license for SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7 with the new ICE platform (Essentials version), a $3,000.00 US value
-This prize will go to the grand prize winner in the 3D category.

Wacom
-Two Intuos3 6x8 tablets.
-These will go to the first place winners in 2D and 3D categories.

We have not decided yet how all of these prizes will be distributed among the winners, so these are subject to change.

CGHUB's contributions to the contest:

-Taron's pick for "Best of Show" (his favorite image out of all the submissions) will be featured on the front page of the challenge book we will be compiling with all the entries and submissions, along with Taron's commentary on each piece.

-Featured articles on CGHUB with the grand prize winner of both 2D and 3D submissions.

Apple Iphone 3G 16 GB
-2nd place winners of each category will receive a new 3G Apple Iphone 16 GB

4 Gnomon DVD's of your choice
-3rd place winners will get their pick of 4 Gnomon training DVD's of your choice.

Sponsors

3D World Magazine
e-on Software
Nevercenter
Pixologic
Softimage
Wacom