***October Challenge Voting***

[Sagenlicht]

My votes did go to:

Jkaen - it could have been even better with more time still a nice map
SG- it got a nice desert ruin feeling
mmmmpig - nice map, I especially like his roofs
StillCypher - cause its a nice small village some object could have been more sharp but overall its a nice map
RobA - cause its a great idea and nicely done

Once again a nice challenge and more maps would deserve my votes but I just can vote 5 times

[RobA]

Sorry Gameprinter...

Didn't realize you had pulled out. I just ran through all the threads and included them in creation order.

Guess that is the problem with a manual process

-Rob A>

[Steel General]

Another extremely difficult vote, so many good entries. I kinda feel like I slighted some folks 'cause I ran out of votes.

[NeonKnight]

My votes went to (in no particular order):

Torq
Ravells
Dragonwolf
Vehuiah
Joao Paulo

Basically people who really did something different than a standard 'City'.

Kudo's especially to Joao Paulo for the City Lights aspect, and to Vehuiah for the PlayDoh city.

[mmmmmpig]

Okay, I frequent a comic book forum that has weekly sketch challenges, one of the things that is really positive about that forum is the comments and crits that are handed out in those sketch challenges. So that is something that I would like to start offering comments and crits here for these challenges. I have found that the comments and crits that I have received from the members of that community have only made me better. So, in that mindset, my C&C are always meant to help and never to hurt. If you have questions or comments about my C&C feel free to ask me either in this thread of PM me.

Anyhoo… here we go. There are a bunch of these because we had so many entries.

Sigurd: Great job of stepping off into the wild and attempting something you are less comfortable with. The bones are there, the next step is to take the “digital sketch” and start tightening elements up.

Jkaen: It looks like the dreaded time monster took over on this one. The execution was looking great, I love the flora texture and look of the jungle area, and the circular spring/well thingy looks amazing.

Notsonoble: I like the idea of districting the area instead of making each poly a separate building. It immediately makes the space much larger in area. I love the layout and the greenspace/garden areas in the upper right of the map. Watch your lightsource, and the palette is a bit saturated as well.

joão paulo: I love the concept here, but it is a bit difficult to read. The lens flare from the lighthouse overpowers the rest of the composition in constantly drags your eye back to the source of the light.

Redrobes: You effing made the landscape and scanned it in 3-D…. that is badassery. The issue that I had with yours is that even though the time periods were a deliberate juxtaposition, they did not seem to interact with each other. The interaction of the space ship with the weathered ruins didn’t really happen. Love the idea though…

Steel General: I think you needed a harder edge on your walls. I love the rubble and the roof tops are great, but the walls seemed to lack a good sense of solidity. The rooftop access squares also seemed to miss somehow, maybe they weren’t dark enough? I especially love that you continued the Sept challenge with this one. I hope that the Nov one allows you to continue fleshing out your arid themed world.

Korrigan: I like this one because of the cleaness of the work. Everything is easily distinguishable and the concept reads well. I think you should look at how grasses and sand intermingle around actual oases, that interface area seemed to be the weak portion of the map to me.

Aidy Baby: I voted for this one. At first I was really upset that you took away the initial wintery realm, but you brought the snows back. The strength of this image is the believability of your building heights. You did a great job of varying the height and demonstrating that difference. Well done!

Sagenlicht: I had a really difficult time not voting for yours. The mapping here is really tight. The only crits that I can come up with is that the cobblestone/gravel area doesn’t seem to transition with any of the building areas, and that the smoke from the chimneys should waft further than the constraints of their building footprints. This map needs to have more interactions between all its constituent pieces.

Ascension: This is another one I had to wrestle with concerning voting. The palette is exquisite, the water is immaculate, and the idea is very nice as well. The trees are overwhelming. The shadow areas are a bit too saturated and compared to the rest of the map they seem a bit too separate from the rest of the map. Since they seem to be set off from the rest of the map in the first place, I wonder if there was not a way to have them be set apart further such that the detail under the trees could be shown.

Mmmmmpig: You don’t notice some areas of concern until after you have stamped “final” on something and posted it for everyone to see. Jfrazierjr pointed out some weakenesses. The roofs of the buildings need some panel texturing. There are no chimneys. I need to add something to that area in the center of the map, why is it so open?

Neonknight: I love that you used a completely different engine to generate this map. Like many game settings it seemed to have very artificial borders and boundaries… you figure out how to make that go away and I think you make a mint in the gaming industry.

Torq: You got one of my votes. The final color palette was spot on and the bats were the best touch of them all. I think you could have pushed the sand encroachment a bit more to really make it seem like the desert was winning. I am always afraid that I am going to type “dessert.”

Vehuiah: Wow, just plain wow… I love the idea of this, but the final presentation could have used some tweaking. Keep doing things that turn these challenges on their ears though!

Dragon Wolf: This was another one that I would have voted for. Inventive to say the least. I love the backstory and concept behind it, but I kept trying to see the underlying landscape.

Lord: You got my vote. This is one of the few entries that seems to truly be a snapshot in time. There is a bunch of detail and thought that have gone into this one. I would have liked to see a bucket brigade though.

Still Cypher: So many maps that I wanted to vote for but ran out of votes. I love the scale of this map. The details are all there. I really have nothing to criticize.

Antony: There is a whole lot of good going on in this map. The rooflines all make sense, and the hatched shading works really well on them as well. The issue that I run into with this map is the grainy background is incongruous with the cell shaded features on the background. Cell shade the background and this piece becomes amazingly strong.

Delgondahntelius: It is a nice entry, and I think if you had some divers poking around or a boat on the water surface it would have been more effective. The palette is very calming and the textures are very well executed.

Ravells: You got one of my votes as well…. And I think I hate you. This is by far one of the most original takes on this month’s challenge presented. Great textures, very pulply feel to it. How it is not garnering more votes at this point of beyond me.

RobA: You also got one of my votes. The cleaness of this one makes me sick. It is immenently readable and is another great take on the challenge. Many other entires alluded to a world off map, but you show how this map fits into a larger whole. The font readability is the only weakness I can find with this map though.

There are a few that I did not review, but those either seemed very incomplete to me, or their authors mentioned that they shouldn’t be considered in the voting.

Anyhoo, those are my crits and comments, I need to go to bed now. It is late

[Jkaen]

Thanks for going through the time to make all those comments mmmmpig.

The general comment I would have had on most of the maps is alot seemed too sparce and empty, I think its the feeling of life in Torq's and Lord's maps for example that really make them feel like towns rather than just a collection of buildings

[joão paulo]

Thanks pig

[ravells]

Many thanks mmmmmpig. I felt kind of guilty about my entry. I've been very busy recently and when the time window presented itself (about 4 hours or so), I knew it wouldn't be enough to do a 'proper map', which had been more than adequately covered by the rest of the entries - so I fudged it, by making it not about the map but the context in which the map was presented. My only regret was not having the time to make the final entry into a book cover for a pulp novel, but I hadn't realised that the closing date was so soon.

:edit: like this:

[AidyBaby]

Thanks mmmmmmmmmmmpig (too many m's!). I'm glad you like the different elevations of the buildings - quite easy when it's built in Sketch-up, especially when it draws the shadows for you. I think I could've been more ambitious but I knew I wouldn't get the time to devote to it. Next month maybe...

-- AidyBaby --

[Steel General]

Steel General: I think you needed a harder edge on your walls. I love the rubble and the roof tops are great, but the walls seemed to lack a good sense of solidity. The rooftop access squares also seemed to miss somehow, maybe they weren’t dark enough? I especially love that you continued the Sept challenge with this one. I hope that the Nov one allows you to continue fleshing out your arid themed world.

Thanks for your comments. I can see where the "harder edge" may have helped. I guess what I had hoped to convey, and maybe didn't quite succeed in, was that the city has been slowly worn by the elements over a long period of time.

It would be nice to continue to link my challenge maps together with a story framework, but I also don't want to "pidgeon-hole" myself. So I guess if it makes sense to continue that I will, and if not...well variety is always good too.