Results of the artwork contest 2019 – Places 41 to 50
It took a few days, but here are the places 41 to 50 of this year's Sandra and Woo and Gaia artwork contest. The submissions are ordered from place #50 to #41. I also asked Powree for her personal order which is shown in brackets.
A lot of work went into these submissions. Show your support by visiting the artists' websites and/or writing a comment in the comment section of this blog post! Many thanks to all artists who participated! I love to see my characters in all these different styles and situations!
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Place 50 goes to Breja
(Place 48 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: Larisa Steals Fire from the Gods - With Larisa's love of fire and art, I thought it would be fun to see her depicted in an ancient Greek-like picture as the one stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humanity like Prometheus. The gods are represented by Seeoahtlahmakaskay, Odin, Ganesha and Huitzilopochtli, and humanity by Sandra, Landon and Cloud.]
This is a very creative submission. I like the setup of the gods and Larisa's very fitting role as Prometheus. The technical quality of the scan of this piece drawn on colored paper could be better, though. The colors didn't turn out that great and there are noticeable JPG artifacts. However, I still decided to put in into the top 50 to honor the creativity that went into it.
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Place 49 goes to Winterblume (website)
(Place 35 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: The end result is very different from what I had originally envisioned! At first I wanted to capture Vivi as the strong warrior queen and the juxtaposition of the royalty with her rouge charm and behavior. But while drawing, it morphed more and more into Vivi in action, the thought that her courage would drive her to run and help, no matter how dangerous the situation might seem.]
Viviana's clothes and body are drawn very well. The coloration is also very harmonious. But it's missing a bit of that creative edge that many of the better placed entries show. But there's no doubt that I will try to include this drawing in the art section of the upcoming anthology The Complete Gaia. I think it will look great in a real book, better than many of the better placed entries.
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Place 48 goes to Navaeil (website)
(Place 46 on Powree's list)
Navaeil drew this oil(?) painting of my alter ego in appropriate attire. How does she know how I always dress when going grocery shopping?
There is also an alternate version that features cutouts of Larisa and Sandra.
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Place 47 goes to Dorota Matyja
(Place 49 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: The drawing was initially intended to display Sandra's pack of friends in the world of Minecraft with Yuna thinking "That's physically impossible." Unfortunately, I had no time to properly finish it, and to draw a Minecraft-like angular background. ["] Woo is holding a chicken from Minecraft in his hand, Larisa is holding a flint and steel, and Sandra is holding a pickaxe from the same game.]
This pencil drawing is certainly not much of a looker on first look. But in my opinion it's a very interesting piece in the tradition of the expressionist art movement, not unlike something Edvard Munch may have scribbled during lunch break. The best part is certainly Yuna's intense stare of disapproval.
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Place 46 goes to Joaslin (website)
(Place 4 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: This is my entry with Sandra and Woo celebrating the 10th anniversary! I made them in my current style, a style that could fit a full length animation. I love cute things so I made them as adorable as I could!]
This detailed drawing of Sandra and Woo reached #4 on Powree's personal list and thus shows that art can sometimes be very subjective. The technical quality of Josalin's drawing is clearly very high and blows most of the better placed entries out of the water in this regard. But, in my opinion, the style just doesn't work. The eyes are too big and too far away from each other, giving Woo and especially Sandra a look that is rather creepy and alien than cute. But Powree obviously felt different and loves the style. In contrast, we will later see some submission that I liked much more than Powree. I guess that's the danger when drawing in such a unique style. Some people, such as me in this case, will just not like it.
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Place 45 goes to PutridPiranha (website)
(Place 18 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: The group's favorite raccoon goddess shows them just how fun it is to float around. A cute group picture with Sandra, Cloud, Larisa, Woo, and some woodland friends.]
This is the first of several well drawn group pictures that somewhat suffer from missing a coherent composition. That said, I definitely appreciate the great effort that went into drawing all these characters. The raccoons turned out particularly well in this piece. Woo's kits are very cute and I'm also fond of Seeoahtlahmakaskay's design. Cloud's face looks a little weird, though.
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Place 44 goes to Joio Bogo (website)
(Place 34 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: Some Sandra and Woo characters, manga style in pen, ink and watercolors.]
Here we have another extensive group picture. The best part is clearly Seeoahtlahmakaskay coming out of Larisa's fireball. I also like Yuna on her fiery hover board. But even more so than PutridPiranha's submission directly above, it's more like a collection of separate small drawings than a coherent single big piece.
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[Size: 7.9 MB]
Place 43 goes to Elk0305
(Place 47 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: I have generated a photo mosaic of the awesome "The Red Hall 018: Ilias and Ryn fight against a fire-ice golem". For this purpose, I made over 4000 square clippings of all other Gaia pages. Using the powerful and free photo mosaic software AndreaMosaic , 1172 clippings out of 556 different Gaia pages have been selected for the final image. I used the original clippings only, so no color adaption, mirroring or rotation have been performed. Due to the high number of tiles in the image (over 5200) some clippings have been used several times (up to 26).]
You should look at this mosaic at different sizes to experience the full effect! I definitely appreciate the immense effort that went into the creation of this mosaic, but I've already seen a good number of pieces with this look in my life and I just received too many hand-drawn illustrations that were clearly more creative.
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Place 42 goes to Yenrou (website)
(Place 33 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: Friendship - This entry is inspired by Sandra and Woo's fateful meeting.]
Yenrou fails to place as high as usually this year. While it's obviously a detailed and very colorful drawing with a touching theme, it feels a bit static since Sandra and Woo are not showing enough emotion. Sandra's character design also did not turn out optimally with her too broad body and blank facial expression.
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Place 41 goes to Mr_Dessin
(Place 25 on Powree's list)
[Artist's comment: I wanted to depict most of the Sandra and Woo team as cosplayers. From top to bottom and left to right:
- Landon: Kinda like Fantastic 4
- Larisa: Evil side with lots her weapons of choice
- Richard: Spaceman cosplay
- Cloud: Obviously his FF7 version, also with a mix of a ninja pose
- Woo: Detective with a magnum and a pen
- Sandra: Detective holding a notebook and a flashlight
- Yuna: Holding one of her inventions" Big trouble is brewing that creates a green smoke all around them.]
With this piece, we're reaching a quality level where getting into the top 10 in several of the prior art contests would have been possible. The quality of all the submissions placed between about #28 and #41 is very similar in my opinion, so the exact placement is somewhat arbitrary. This group picture has several strong points, most notably the consistent quality of all characters and the good color composition. It's also a piece that would look particularly nice in an art book.