Front Page Art Preference Poll

[breh]

Chou/Fate/Icepick/Swaggersaurus

Chou: Would be perfect if not for those volcarona wings hrrrrrng
Fate: I love this style in the general sense, but more red/green would have been better (Zoro is mostly black with too little red).
Icepick: Hydreigon is lacluster but the others look amazing.
Swaggersaurus: Would be perfect if not for those akwardly small Darmanitan arms

Wanted to choose Kenethcp but felt colors could be better represented. Ivysaur had two good ones but (as Oglemi noted) Victini was... poor, to say the least. Strangeways' not Archeops is good. Jarodo only needed a vector to make his drawings look good, but as drawings, they pale in comparison to others. KoA... mostly because I hate Hydreigon. Kevin Garret had a perfect Reuniclus but the others needed work.

 

[Slideskata]

Energy Storm's was the best all round one, they were all 10/10. I also voted for Chou Toshio, that Ferrothorn was perfect, Volcorona was also very good but Thundrus was average. Ivysaur's Kyurem and Virizion were very good, but Victini was rather poor. KoA's were very realistic and were rather awesome at the best. Swaggersaurus's Chandalure and Reincilus were great, but Darmanitan looked fat.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Are we allowed to debate?

icepick's Hydreigon is absolutely epic. If anything, the bland poses for the other two were kind of disappointing (though, having drawn Volcarona myself, I know that this Pokemon *can't* really take on a creative pose, so no fault to icepick there). Imo, Hydreigon really pulls the set up. The poses, lighting and movement of the piece is incredible. Of course, icy's coloring style in general is amazing. Who needs outlines Doug?

@zoroark-- to be fair, there are very few red Pokemon amongst the 5th gen Pokemon. There's a reason why Volcarona and Darmanitan have so many entries-- there are very few other truly red Pokemon to pick. Zoroark was perfectly viable imo, and it gets props for being the poster boy (girl? was a mother Zoroark in the movie) of the whole BW gen.

Az's Darmanitan is also awesome. I really like the stylization of all his pieces. Face it, Darmanitan is a roley poley kinda Pokemon, and I love the cute stylization here. It's Pokemon, it's art, "correctness" is only important to a certain extent.

Actually, Reniuclus is my least favorite of Az's set, but again this isn't his fault-- Reniuclus is a rather bland looking Pokemon, in that its face doesn't allow for much change in expression. I kind of feel like if you've seen one Reniuclus pick, you've seen them all (and hey, if you look here, none of the reniuclus pics here strike much of a creative impression compared to the others). Now compare this to a Pokemon like Hydreigon and I think you'll understand.

by the way, a daruma:

 

[DougJustDoug]

Interesting voting. Before I even put up the poll, I decided I would not just "pick and choose" artworks to be on the front page. I wanted to see which art got a lot of votes, and then set a cutoff line for which art would make the front page. Any art above the cutoff would be used, and any art below the cutoff would not be used.

Personally, I voted for 10 artists. Of those ten, my favorite individual pictures were Fatecrasher's Jellicent, KoA's Reuniclus, Swaggersaurus' Chandelure, and strangeways' Samurott (in no particular order there). My favorite overall submission sets were by Chou Toshio, KoA, and kennethcp. If I were forced to vote for only one submission set, I think KoA would have been my sole choice. Fortunately we get to use several, and I voted for all the options I thought would look good on the front page.

I decided to set the voting cutoff for the front page at 40%. Some options I personally voted for did not make this cutoff, so I'm not playing favorites here. I love all the artwork that is above the line, and there is a fairly significant "drop off" in voting results right below that 40% cutoff. So I think this is good for the site, and fair to all the artists too.

Here's the list of artworks that will be used in rotation on the front page, in this order:

Chou Toshio
KoA
icepick
Swaggersaurus
Kevin Garrett
kennethcp
Fatecrashers

Thank you to all the artists that submitted art in support of this project!

Look for a new front page, and all sorts of new stuff on the Smogon website soon!

 

[Fatecrashers]

 

[strangeways]

Congrats to all the artists who got chosen! It was a blast seeing all of the entries as well as posting my own!

 

[RitterCat]

Congratulations to all who were picked, it's all great art, so no matter what the front page will be very nice indeed

 

[NatGeo]

Congrats to everyone, especially the newer artists that made the list, specifically kennthcp! Great submissions were from everybody in here as always!

 

[Kevin Garrett]

I laughed at Fatecrashers post. Thanks and congrats to everyone else.

 

[kennethcp]

They love me they really love me! ;P

 

[DougJustDoug]

To the seven front page artists: If you would like to post links to larger or higher-resolutions images for me to resize down -- post them in this thread. Resizing images multiple times can cause ugly artifacts to creep in. So if you'd like me to start with your originals, I can do that.

Just post here, and I'll check back when I'm ready to resize and upload images.

 

[az]

hidden because they're all 2kx2k

Hide

 

[Fatecrashers]

zoroark

jellicent

scrafty

 

[Chou Toshio]

Big and beautiful

Hide

 

[kennethcp]

here they is

 

[Kevin Garrett]

Hide

 

[icepick]

Stand back guys

 

[DougJustDoug]

I am on the final runway for launching the BW site upgrade. Here's all the "circle art" from the seven artists that will be used on the front page:

I resized and centered all the art and did my best. But when you have to do 21 artworks, I may not have given each work the attention they deserve to get them *just right* in the circle. If it was my own art -- I'm a real perfectionist about stuff. I obsess over every pixel practically. So, each artist may want to get their stuff perfect too.

Here's the deal: If any of the front page artists would like to get their art "perfect", I'll be happy to let you do that. But I don't want you to make a bunch of extra work for me.

Here's all you need to do -- post a 145x145 pixel BOX of artwork in this thread for each piece you want to size yourself. I will then take that 145x145 box and I will superimpose the circle, crop the art within the circle, and add the shadow. Do not draw a circle for me, don't put a shadow behind it, and don't crop your art in a circle. You can, and probably will, crop your art in the 145x145 box. But not the circle -- understand? Just scale down your art and center it in a 145x145 square, and keep in mind that it will be cropped later inside a circle. Make scaling and centering decisions accordingly, see?

Please do not scale your art down so small that it is entirely visible in the circle. The circle should obscure some of the art. Similarly, don't post your art so big, that only the head of your pokemon is visible. Ideally, just *some* of the pokemon should be obscured. How much? Well, I can't say for sure. You can see above what I thought looked about right while doing all 21 pieces. Look at the current smogon front page, and look at your own art, and make your own call.

That's all there is to it. Or, don't do anything and we'll go with the art displayed above. I'm fine with whatever you choose to do.

 

[Kevin Garrett]

Thanks for all the time you've put into this, Doug. All of these look wonderful. You can use the version you made for my circles.

Edit: Now that I look at it more closely, is Excadrill missing the drop shadow behind it?

 

[Fatecrashers]

front page gonna look awesome, we can't thank you enough doug

here's my scaled down art

 

[DougJustDoug]

Thanks for all the time you've put into this, Doug. All of these look wonderful. You can use the version you made for my circles.

Edit: Now that I look at it more closely, is Excadrill missing the drop shadow behind it?

Yes, the shadow was accidentally turned off. I'll fix that. Good catch!


Edit: Fixed and updated in the post above.

 

[Chou Toshio]

I'm not sure if these would make for better than the ones DJD already posted, but here's some with a bit of a saturation/contrast boost:

edit: On IRC I thought they could use the saturation/contrast boost, but I'm kind of losing confidence there... the current ones are kind of growing on me... I'll leave it up to DJD about which he thinks look better.

 

[az]

ct if it helps at all i think your originals (that doug has circled) look better!

i also think they're a good size in his image too

i'm considering tweaking mine because there's a lot of white space, will get back to you

 

[(makeup)]

Thanks doug for all the hard work you're putting into the site.

On a side note, something about KG's art is so perfect for the front page.

 

[az]

hi!

i kinda like how chandelure is circled in your version, but i tweaked darmanitan and reuniclus a little because i thought so much white space looked awkward

i had a hard time envisioning them within the circles, so if these don't come out well at all, go ahead with what you've already got and disregard my meddling, i guess

thanks doug!