Thank you everyone that entered we had a great showing. I have a few things to work out to make these contests better but we will do more soon.






The winner's image will be in the splash screen of v15.0j

Thanks again everyone that entered,
Jason Simonds

Congratulations! Great winners and wonderful entries in the contest all around.

I'll look forward to that octo-creature popping up every time I start A:M

Great stuff ,all very well deserved

Thanks everybody ......
this is a dream come true .... thanks thanks thanks

when I bought my first A:M ( 1999 ) , I thought: "one day will have a character of mine in this box"... I know there are many, many, many things to learn yet... but............. this day has come .... My happiness is indescribable...

well, some information about the still

The idea for this image came when I was drawing the earth and the moon on a sheet of paper, when I started drawing the sun, I realized that its rays appear to be tentacles, which hug the Earth, so the yellow orange color in the octopus. The old style phone was only to give a nostalgic feel to the scene and show that the sun does not care for our technological advances. It will continue, in the same way, lighting us


render time = 30h
light = 1 bulb light + 1 Klieg + radiosity
material:
Octopus - 1 Material ( simbiont - Plush )
Earth / Moon - texture downloaded from http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps2.htm
dark background edited in PS

geez, i don't have anywhere near the patience for a 30h render for one image, heck, i don't have it for an animated scene in HD. And tht will be why I never have a character on the box Actually, I would need to enter first before there'd be any chance of having a char on the box

Congratulations Marcos! I like your image even more since you told us what it is about. I didn't get that the octopus is the sun when I first saw it. I just thought it was a really really cool image. But now it means so much more

Great job everyone!
( you have Nancy's forum name as kualrobi )

Congrats Marcos!

The credits on 3rd place should read by Nancy Gormezano, Ken Heslip. Mark Skodacek, Holmes Bryant

(character design, body modeling, texturing, image by Nancy, face modeling by Ken, body rigging by Mark, face rigging by Holmes)

I thought you did Gloria's rigging Nancy.

Hmmm...I think I rigged Trot - I think I'm remembering it was Mark Skodacek who did the body rig & Holmes did the face rig on Gloria

Congratulations, everyone! There were some fantastic entries in this contest! (Made me miss seeing the ol' monthly ones!)

Congrats to everyone! Extremely good entries.

Congrats Xtaz! It is the worthy winner. I know that photo-retouching is frowned upon...but I JUST could'nt help it!!! Every time I looked at your image it begged for this: (Please forgive me.) I gotta check my monitor... I can hardly even see the 2nd place winning image.

I fixed Nancy's display name, And if you let me know who rigged your model i will add it.

You guys and gals are the awesomest!!!
Congrats!

Congrats Marcos, Nancy, Holmes, Arthur... Everyone!

I see Marcos is weighing in on how his entry was created.
I'm interested in seeing more about the back story of Arthurs characters also:



There is a definitely a story in there somewhere!

Arthur?

Congratulations, everyone! Very nice models Marcos Arthur and Nancy.
Some of the ones who didn't get that many votes were beautiful models as well.

Michel

Maybe Nancy. But I don't remember doing rigging on her anyway.

BTW Congrats to all the winners. Grand work.

Congratulation to all the winners. Great job.

Just trying to get it straight, and give credit where credit is due - I believe this is how it all went down:

The character design, body, costume modeling, texturing, image by Nancy, face modeling by Ken, body rigging by Mark, face rigging by Holmes

AND I add another Congrats to all who entered

I had 2 entries... my old 'MotorMouth' character...that I took off the shelf...and my 1st AMPaint experiment was the aliens looking at the footprint that I slammed together on the last day of 2009. The alien design was inspired from an image I see in the cheap wood paneling woodgrain above my bed...I didn't expect to place.

That's a surprise! I wondered who did that excellent, clever, interesting image.

I would never have guessed you, mainly as I thought for sure that Aliens also have boobs.

You haven't had a good look at the belly on that thing...lets just say the belly button...it's an 'outtie'. I have an obsession!

Ah yes - of course - silly me - 1 eyeballed aliens would only be 1 boobed - I should have known that.

ummm...At least I hope its a boob...

Hi Rodney, I've been away from home a couple of days, so I'm just now seeing the results.

First off: Congratulations to Marcos, Nancy, Mark, Ken and Holmes! Well Done! I voted for your entries.
The lighting in the octopus image is fabulous! I have yet to master it at that level.

My cowbird has participated in a mascot contest a coule of years back. It had a straight neck, no fluffy
part at the bottom of it's neck and waterpistols. Someone then mentioned that the waterpistols were a bit lame,
so I made it a good ol' western colt now. The addition this time around was the cow with fur. I've been playing around with it
ever since I saw the great yeti characters a few years back. It isn't easy, but with a lot of testrenders some nice effects can be achieved.
The image has rendered for 17,5 hours because there were about 9 lights in the scene, but was still a bit dark for my taste.
I've been working on a small animation where the cow is thrown onto the cowbird who tries to shoot in a cool pose.
Since then I added hair to the cow and made it larger. Perhaps I'll follow up with the animation bit in a while.

I once again apologise for mentioning the octopus before voting ended, guys. I was confident it would win for sure... and hey... it did!
It is excellent Marcos!

Cheers,
Arthur

Hi Arthur ....
You did an excelent job as well as Nancy, Ken, Holmes, Matt and all others participants .... 4 votes separeted octopus / cowbird, was a close election...
allow me comment some aspects in your image:
Both characters were very well designed and the idea of putting them living together is very good.
One thing that caught my attention when I saw your picture the first time was the position of the legs (cow ), the symmetry of their positions is unnatural.
Try using AO, IBL or a dome when you're working in an outdoor scene. These types of lights make a clear disparity in the quality of the rendered image.
that´s it ... continue presenting us with your work.

Hi Marcos,

Thank you for your reply. I curtiously yield to your four votes. The octopus is a well deserved win. But it is nice to see that my work has become good enough to compete.
I love the light that falls onto the face of the octopus. I have not experimented much with lighting multiple lights. I understand the skylight dome, but don't know about AO and IBL, so I have some forum searches to do. Thank you for the tip! Perhaps I'll rerender my Cowbird image in better light once things become clear to me.
It is true that the feet/legs of the cow are too symmetrical. I've been playing around with it, but different poses didn't help much. Two of the legs should stand differently. Perhaps raising one leg like a horse would've been funny.

BTW, I also love the texture of your Octopus' skin between the eyes. Is that a mere bumpmap or a material?

Thanks again,

Arthur

ps: I've made some animations already. All of them are A:M + Photoshop works. see www.karakteranimatie.nl