AOTM #25: The Four Elements [ADVANCED VOTING]

[AOTM]

Defined: Render or draw a representation of one or more of the four elements: Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire.
Poll Closure: June 9th, 11:59 PST
Theme suggested by: Rose Swan, Special thanks to Brovo
Contest run by: Shon Harris and Bela

The artist used a variety of stock imagery in addition to their own photography before ultimately running a series of filters over the work. In depicting the forest scene, we have two separate elements personified amidst the nature.

No component was safe from this artist, who intentionally touched on a fifth element, Void, separate personifications of the elements, and subtle connections between a few of the elementals.

In this piece, the artist personified each element into feminine forms, including a fifth elemental sister, Spirit.

• Vote on your favorite entry based on the work that resonates with you.
• Please post explaining your vote and why.
• Please provide helpful feedback on the entries.
• Do NOT post anything insulting or offensive about entries.
• Do NOT vote for your own entry.
• Do NOT tell others which entry is your own.
• Poll End Date: June 9th

First Impression:

Your first thoughts on the piece here

Areas of Achievement:

• Specific opinions here

Areas of Opportunity:

• Specific opinions here

Final Decision

If you voted for the person or not, and why.

This is not mandatory, but highly encouraged. This is to promote thoughtful critiques for the artists who took the time to submit their entries. Not only will submitting a critique/comment show appreciation, but it will give artists something to work from to better their work in the future. Finally, those comments/critiques that clearly have the most effort and offer insight will be featured with the winning work in the Hall of Fame, and potentially, in the RPG Newsletter.

It is not necessary to place the comments and critiques within a hider.

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XCF file

Fire stock
Spirit stock
Earth stock
Water stock
Air stock

AOTM Contest Managers are allowed to read, review, and submit their own entries - but are NOT permitted to cast a vote. This is because they know who each author of these entries are, and the entries are no longer anonymous to them. WOTM Contest Managers, however, are allowed to vote - as the entries have remained anonymous to them.

We greatly appreciate those of you who participated, and especially those of you who vote. Without either of you this contest would not exist.

Remember, it is YOU who decides the winner, so you all hold the power. Use it well. (:

As a final note: Contest winners should be informed that they are now entitled to an unofficial prize that AOTM is offering in the form of a Golden Ticket request to both Bela and Rose Swan's Graphic Shops. Each winner can make request (a max of 2-3 requests) in one of the shops after their win has been announced. The winner's requests will be treated as priority, and can be made even if the Shop Owner has closed request submissions.

[PaladinFoster]

-Entry #3-

First Impression:
The first thing that struck me about this piece was the intense, deep colors. The purple of the first figure in particular is very striking.

Areas of Achievement:
The piece does an excellent job of personifying the elements. The models chosen fit their element like a glove, and the effects applied to them make it very clear which element they represent. The varied expressions convey a sense of the dynamic emotions and personalities of each elemental. The lines of the piece are very clean, the artist clearly has skill in cropping images.

Areas of Opportunity:
I feel a little more could have been done with the background than plain black and a few shapes. It left the piece feeling slightly empty and without context.

Final Decision
This piece receives my vote. It stood out well in it's use of color and pose, and easily won me over.

[Jorick]

As with the Casual entries, I'll do a little review of each piece.

I like the idea of the way this piece was made, but it's really blurry and trying to focus on it and look at it for more than a few seconds hurts my eyes, which is kind of unfortunate since I'm trying to look closely at the thing and see the details of it. Ah well, I may as well list other negative bits while I'm at it. I have no idea what's going on with the bird, or maybe it's two birds, hard to tell if that blob to the right of the obvious bird is another one or not. Anyway, is it some kind of pet or familiar of the fire lady, or is it just flying through? If the former, why, what connection is there between birds and fire? Is the bird actually on fire for some good reason, or is it just getting roasted by the fire lady? If the latter, why put it in there at all, or why in that location rather than off to the side to fill some of that relatively empty space? And finally, that tree off to the right is distractingly lacking in blurriness compared to everything else, as if it's supposed to be a main attention grabber of the image along with the two women.

On the positive side of things, as mentioned before I do like the concept of the creation of the image. I'm not sure if that wave thing from the water lady is supposed to be part of her dress or a wave, but the idea of them being sort of one and the same has caught my fancy and now I'm imagining her as having a magical water dress that she uses as a weapon, which is pretty cool. The scene is really very simple, but rather than being a negative I see it as a positive because it leaves the particulars up to the viewer; it's unclear whether these personified elements are about to fight, or they're just hanging out in the forest, or maybe they're showing off to each other, so on and so forth.

I liked the image overall, despite my initial negativity, and after reviewing the other entries I decided it earned my vote. I debated the choice for a long while because of how this one screws with my eyes, but I figure that's just my own problem rather than an inherent problem with the image so I shouldn't hold it against you.

Nice use of colors here, it's definitely eye catching. The proportions of the personified element people look to be in order, by which I mean my untrained eye sees no issues with them. Your interpretations of the elements personified are pretty interesting. The mermaid is fairly obvious, and I guess there's not much you can do to make a fire personification look interesting short of shaping a person out of fire, but the fairy to represent air is something I've seen a few times before and thought it was a rather nice choice, and the flower girl for earth... I was confused at first, but it makes sense. It's more interesting to look at than a rock person, that's for sure. Oh, and the void element being represented by a hole in the tree was a neat choice, although... does that tree have boobs? It looks like that tree has boobs.

Anyway, negative bits. It's a very busy image, especially for one so small in dimensions, but at the same time there's nothing going on. You've got these five personified elements all just.. hanging out here in a few square feet of space, aside from the fairy blowing air at fire lady. The interactions are mildly interesting in concept, but rather than air it looks like the fairy has some eldritch monster in her family tree due to what looks to be a bunch of mini tentacles or a tongue with five forks popping out of her mouth. The other interactions don't have anything weird with them. Oh, also, you have earth girl sitting over there like she's trying to be a high fashion model or something, which amuses me.

Overall, I've got to say I'm pretty much neutral about this drawing. It's pretty good from a technical standpoint, but the image is kind of dull once you look past the array of colors.

Hrm... I get what you were going for here, but it's very disjointed. The spirit and earth personifications are full on colored in, whereas water and air look to have only got a little bit of the same treatment, and then I can't tell if fire's tanned look was already there or came from a color filter thing. Throwing everything onto a black background makes it feel rather empty even though most of the space is actually filled. The extraordinarily fake looking fire and leaves were a bad fit alongside the nice looking background bits for the other ladies.

That's about enough negativity from me. Your choices of models for personification use was pretty good, with each one having a clear linkage to their element, though for water and fire it's mainly just color of clothes as far as I can tell. Air's wispy white clothing was a good choice, and spirit lady's pose with her hands crossed over her chest makes all sorts of sense. My favorite is the choice for earth though, since the staff and the clothing gives off a druidic vibe and druids in fantasy stuff are always closely tied to the earth and nature. Oh, and as I mentioned before, your background doodads for spirit, water, and air were nice picks as well.

Overall I'm sitting neutral with this piece. The good and bad things equal out for me, so that's that.

[Brand]

I found entry one the most aesthetically appealing. I only wish I could see the stock images they used, so I could tell how much effort was put forth into altering the images.

I think entry two took an imaginative twist on the components, especially with the figure for Earth being carved into the tree.

Entry three is pleasant, They did an excellent job with the smooth edges and clear cutting, however I felt it lacked the 'story telling' element entry one and two had.

I couldn't decide between voting for one or two, but in the end I stuck with entry two. While I understand photo manipulation can be a labor of love, and you can pour a lot of creativity into a piece, it's also possible to drastically alter an image with a click or two with the mouse. In the end, the lack of reference photos turned me away from entry one, because I have no idea how much the artist actually changed the pieces. Entry two on the other hand, was done from scratch, so I know that the artist started with a blank canvas, and created everything I see from her own imagination.

My biggest gripe with entry two is the lack of focus, or in other words, what's the point of the painting, the same with entry three.

[Shon Harris]

Just to offer some insight, it was the choice of the AOTM to not show the stock-work. I would ask that people look past the sense of 'how much was done' and look into the content, technical skill, and what they find touches them most deeply. The concept of how much work did this take, and thus how valuable is this, is not a notion that betters image making. Feel free to continue this line of reasoning if it pleases you, however, I will say that we will be trying to focus more on the final work.

As usual, thank you for the comments so far everyone. I hope we get more feedback for these artists and am very happy so many are jumping to comment!

[Kadaeux]

Just to offer some insight, it was the choice of the AOTM to not show the stock-work. I would ask that people look past the sense of 'how much was done' and look into the content, technical skill, and what they find touches them most deeply. The concept of how much work did this take, and thus how valuable is this, is not a notion that betters image making. Feel free to continue this line of reasoning if it pleases you, however, I will say that we will be trying to focus more on the final work.

As usual, thank you for the comments so far everyone. I hope we get more feedback for these artists and am very happy so many are jumping to comment!

So you're revoking the Admin's rules against plagiarism now? Congrats Shon.

I decided I should expand.

By removing stock from the sight of people you've completely removed peoples ability to appreciate how much work, effort or actual art the person contributed. As far as anyone can see, by and large, they could have just submitted a piece from someones DeviantArt page without any work whatsoever.

(Example: Sorry if I offend the person who submitted Entry 3 but, as far as I can tell its just 5 DevArt pics with a bad colour filter. I simply don't see any art in it, it's just 5 pictures side by side with a colour filter thrown on for good measure.)

Your decision to "not show the stock-work" doesn't help people make a better decision, it hinders, hampers and utterly cripples it. It's an absurd rash decision with absolutely no basis in fact. You've made a rash decision that hinders people from voting properly.

[CloudyDreams]

Oh my...

The colors are very intense, and I love it. How the artist played around with the colors suited this piece very well. The blurriness is attractive in it's own way (to me), and it just made this work all the more interesting. However, I have no idea why that bird is place in the middle. Is it to show that these two elements are around nature? I can only assume that the bird is part of the picture because of the statement; "amidst the nature."

The tree on the right is certainly an eye-catcher. It doesn't have much blurriness and wasn't particularly necessary in this piece. My eyes were diverted from the main points, to the tree, which does not help this work at all. Over all, very nicely done.

Ah, I love how you fit in void so nicely into this picture. The usage of colors are a plus, and the body proportions seemed to look right in most of the "elements". I'm still working on human anatomy and body proportions, and I suck at it. So, I won't say anything for now.

The one thing that irks me a bit is how the "elements" are placed in the picture, but it doesn't seem to connect. I can see (or assume) that the water element is providing water to the tree with the void element? Aside from that, the only real interaction I see is the air elemental blowing air on the fire elemental. It doesn't have much a main point, which is quite disappointing for a nicely-drawn piece.

Over all, this was nicely done, and the artist knows what he/she wants to put on the paper.

Very clean with all of the elements lined up. Er, I don't see much of a focal point, but I'm guessing that's what the artist wanted. The background was a problem, but I did enjoy the little background thingies behind the elementals. The "cutting" and "cleaning" in this work was remarkably tidy, which shows patience or skill in this artist. Other then that, I was fairly neutral with this work.

I was stuck between Entry 1 and Entry 2. I liked both of your pieces in equal standing, so I just stared at your work and nitpicked on everything. I chose number one because it did have a main focal point (with a little distraction on the right) and had a a flair of colors which I absolutely adore.

[edit]
Slightly disappointed that AOTM decided to not show stock work.

[Shon Harris]

So you're revoking the Admin's rules against plagiarism now? Congrats Shon.

I decided I should expand.

By removing stock from the sight of people you've completely removed peoples ability to appreciate how much work, effort or actual art the person contributed. As far as anyone can see, by and large, they could have just submitted a piece from someones DeviantArt page without any work whatsoever.

(Example: Sorry if I offend the person who submitted Entry 3 but, as far as I can tell its just 5 DevArt pics with a bad colour filter. I simply don't see any art in it, it's just 5 pictures side by side with a colour filter thrown on for good measure.)

Your decision to "not show the stock-work" doesn't help people make a better decision, it hinders, hampers and utterly cripples it. It's an absurd rash decision with absolutely no basis in fact. You've made a rash decision that hinders people from voting properly.

I'm starting question the possibility of having a simple informational statement without being jumped on by the same names. I must have offended you at some point, which disturbs me. I'm sorry for whatever it was/is. In no way am I trying to be an ass here. PM me, Kada, if you'd like. I'm honestly concerned some ill impression may have come up somewhere down the line. I'd really, really like to avoid taking over this thread. If it is possible to keep discuss further in the private AOTM forum, via PM, or really just not here, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Without looking at the original work you cannot tell if it was posted under Creative Commons fair use, which many DA pieces are. Stock images are uploaded as fair use tools that most artists openly do not require credit or reference without otherwise stating this preference. The obligation of referencing is between the stock provider and the artist themselves. For all we know, the artists here could be downloading or purchasing stock packs. These businesses are also legal and do not fall under plagiarism. My point? It is the burden of the AOTM to kill any plagiarizing work before it ever is published in our name. We will not allow plagiarism to be passed by RPG Staff and will not enable such by not calling it out should it arise. Also, a simple tool for finding if any piece was ripped off another site is to simply save-as and drag it into your Google Images search. Google will automatically find work that is with similar in composition.

The rash decision has actually been done numerous times in the AOTM history before my time. This isn't first time nor will be the last, with or without me. The difference was my claiming this one time decision. I did something and claimed it rather than try a thing without taking responsibility.

To expand on the thinking: In monitoring feedback, a lot of voters prefer traditional work. When this preference was explained it was often due to the perception that creating 'by hand' was more work or somehow more respectable. Further specifications valued drawing and painting more than photo-manipulation, even when the manipulation was significantly improved in terms of aesthetic or appearance. If a viewer found themselves viewing a thing as too easy, they'd pass it by. Even if a manipulation took many hours and a lot of creative effort, if a filter appeared to be used, even to an artist layperson, the value seemed to be slipping. To experiment with this perception, openly not showing stocks was given a try. The idea was to gauge how people use the stocks, how their sense of value shifts, and to help balance the strange range of overvaluing some mediums and undervaluing others. It's an experiment. A try to learn more about our community. I said the absence of stock was a decisive action, not a permanent change. No need to stab so deeply and so purposefully for the heart. You should trust that someone studying and working in the visual arts field would know and work against the biggest plague to that field (plagiarism/art theft). Feel free to shoot the AOTM, Bela, or myself with further questions, suggestions, or critiques. We welcome feedback and encourage responses about the contest.

[Jorick]

To expand on the thinking: In monitoring feedback, a lot of voters prefer traditional work. When this preference was explained it was often due to the perception that creating 'by hand' was more work or somehow more respectable. Further specifications valued drawing and painting more than photo-manipulation, even when the manipulation was significantly improved in terms of aesthetic or appearance. If a viewer found themselves viewing a thing as too easy, they'd pass it by. Even if a manipulation took many hours and a lot of creative effort, if a filter appeared to be used, even to an artist layperson, the value seemed to be slipping. To experiment with this perception, openly not showing stocks was given a try. The idea was to gauge how people use the stocks, how their sense of value shifts, and to help balance the strange range of overvaluing some mediums and undervaluing others. It's an experiment. A try to learn more about our community. I said the absence of stock was a decisive action, not a permanent change. No need to stab so deeply and so purposefully for the heart. You should trust that someone studying and working in the visual arts field would know and work against the biggest plague to that field (plagiarism/art theft). Feel free to shoot the AOTM, Bela, or myself with further questions, suggestions, or critiques. We welcome feedback and encourage responses about the contest.

From my own point of view, not showing the stocks actually has an opposite effect than what you seem to be aiming for. Rather than making me less biased against photo manipulation, it made me more wary of it and made me consider that perhaps the image was in fact just a very slipshod job of pasting images together and then putting tons of filters on it to make it too blurry to catch how rough it was. When I opened up each of the images, my immediate thought was to vote for Entry 1 because it was the most visually striking and aesthetically pleasing of the three (even counting the fact that it makes my eyes tweak out if I look at it for too long), but then when looking at each piece more closely to review them I found the lack of stock to reference making me consider voting for another entry because I could actually see how much work they did. I've voted for photo manipulations over equally aesthetically pleasing hand drawn art in the past, and every single time it was because I looked at the stock used and saw how they truly did have to put a good deal of work into making the image rather than just straight up copying and pasting a couple things together.

I still ended up voting for Entry 1, as stated in my little reviews, but it would have been nice to have the stock to see what they started with. It makes it much easier for people who aren't very experienced with looking at the details of photo manipulations (such as myself) to see what's going on and to be able to appreciate the work and artistic talent it takes to make them. I trust the AOTM managers to keep a close eye on the plagiarism thing, so that doesn't enter at all into my thing about the stock images, but I'd still like to be able to see the stocks used for the purpose of voting and reviewing work.

[Kadaeux]

It's exactly what Jorick said.

Your actions won't have the effect you're going for. Without posting the stock the voters have ABSOLUTELY no concept about what the artist has actually done.

You can't judge a piece "on its own merits" if you have no idea what those merits are.