comp 24 IDEAS

[BiG ToE-3DT]

toss out tose ideas.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

stylized character, I'm thinking athlete

[BenniKImmel]

Im thinking either Create-Your-Own superhero, or some kind of vehicle/prop creation

[Perversonality]

The last vehicle contest had a load of entries, so another one might be fun

[poopipe]

an environment maybe? I know I need some bush practice.

how about "a sleepy hollow"

[xXm0RpH3usXx]

how about a polycountlimit of 1000, a theme like "ordinary villagers" and letting everyone download the models for mods and games for free use?

[Perversonality]

I know I need some bush practice.

Hur-hur-hur... ;) :evil:

how about a polycountlimit of 1000, a theme like "ordinary villagers" and letting everyone download the models for mods and games for free use?

I wouldn't make my model available, but a "Village of the Damned" might work well. Gives people the chance to do a pseudo-American gothic zombie killer thriller thing... Hmmm, B-Movies monsters! :D

[ryvick]

how about a swat force team or mercteam outfit. uniform for army units or special units. i dont think i have seen that and i know its a very common model in a lot of games these days.

[funkdelic]

just watched Kungfu panda, and I´m totally on the animal warrior mood, could be a nice theme...

[BenniKImmel]

i Like Ryvicks idea a lot.

[Perversonality]

i Like Ryvicks idea a lot.

The problem for me is that it's too common and I can see 5-10 very, very similar entries and not much else

[ryvick]

from the top of my head i can think of the black swat team, the arctic stealth, jungle mercs, and spy suit. i think such a general idea would make people have creative freedom on a unique style.
Here is a link to Mcfarlanes Military Figurines :
http://www.pf-militarygallery.com/action%20figures/mcfarlane%20military.htm
also a quick grab of images of different military uniforms. if you wanna be unique then you can make that naked guy just make sure he is packing.

[-IdanI-]

Im with ryvick, and the animal warrior is also very good :smug:

[xXm0RpH3usXx]

wc3 pandaren ftw!
i'd give it a try, but you'd guys need to help me a bit how to do some things...
(would be nice if there'd be someone who would state that he or she would help me!)

[BiG ToE-3DT]

everyone will help, in one wat or another.

Thers a them for the next comp: Helping Hand.

[omnicypher]

ryvick: he was ordered to test the army's new invisible camoflague... aparently they still need to work out some bugs, lol.

special forces operative sounds awsome. towns people might work, but 1000 tris for a character never looks very good. environments might be nice, i need to work on my foliage as well.

although special forces could end up very similar, variations in camo color, weapons, ammo pouches, head equipment (bare, helmet, nightvision, radio, ski mask, face armor, goggles) and rank/race/country of origin could add some variety. plus we could all use a soldier model for the demo reel.

look at GI joe, tons of character variety (least opressive dress code of any military unit) and any of those characters could fall under a special forces description. you could even make a terrorist with a bomb vest, and he could fit into those guidlines.

[BenniKImmel]

I see a great deal of variety possible. Environments would be nice too, could be pretty fun.

[xXm0RpH3usXx]

ah common, i'm trying to find my way into character moddeling, dont make me go a step back and make environments..

and btw @bigtoe:

nobody helped me in the lowpoly/realtime art subforum, why would people do that here?

[funkdelic]

I could do environments, but characters are so cool..

Chess piece based characters

[BiG ToE-3DT]

well there is a big Dom War like enviornment challenge coming up, maybe we could do a warm up, or so that we dont get burned out, we can stay away from it.

[funkdelic]

nobody helped me in the lowpoly/realtime art subforum, why would people do that here?
contests ppl are all in the same topic giving tips and advices, but its up to you to particpate!

[BiG ToE-3DT]

ah common, i'm trying to find my way into character moddeling, dont make me go a step back and make environments..

and btw @bigtoe:

nobody helped me in the lowpoly/realtime art subforum, why would people do that here?

all practice is good practice. But to answer your main question, the sub forum you speak of is a tricky place, it doesn't get that many onlookers, and when it does, they are there just to look. Here on the other hand, everyone looks daily and are here to get help and give it. So you have a better chance of learning something new here than you do in the sub forum.

[setschaos]

I've been itching to get some team oriented work started lately. I like Ryyvicks idea, however, I also agree that it may be too plain. How about a two person team consisting of no more than four but no less than two models of a group, but, to toss in a curve, make them stylized...

For instance, Big Toe and Ryyvick can team up and make two characters each (lets say 8000 tris for all your characters/ 1500 tris for weapons [maybe]; both teamates put together) but they end up making a SWAT team of monkeys or a Demolition team of goblins, or a mock up of FBI with Chibi humans as the characters.

that sounds bad ass and challenging to me, and that's what practice is really about, pushing yourself.

[funkdelic]

really liked you idea Setchaos!
and a environment could use some team this time!

[BenniKImmel]

Id personally rather keep the challenges individual, or at least let us do the challenge individual if we dont want to partner up.

[Warlock 279]

I've got a suggestion, its not for the theme, but this seemed the best place to bring it up.

Could we start judging the first 10 points as "concept and presentation" instead of just "concept"? Each judge could break it up 5/5 if they wanted or they could just give a 1-10 on the whole package, however they wanted to do it.

It wouldn't change the total points any, you'd still have 3, 10 point categories for a total of 30 possible points.

It just feels odd to have "concept" weighted equal to "texture" and "model" in challenges where the theme is going to, I don't want to say "restrict" because there's always room for variety as well as a varying degree of clever interpretations, in even the tightest of themes, but it doesn't seem like there's always a need for a whole 1-10 scale for "concept" to me.

Take the last three challenges...

The Vehicle Challenge, and the Rockstar Challenge - There's lots of room for coming up with your own vehicle/rockstar, and there were some cool original ideas, but if you chose a pre-existing vehicle/rock star, which a lot of people did [myself included], should you really be able to score well on "concept" if all you're doing is re-creating an existing idea, and if you can't score high on "concept" you could be out of the running right away to someone else's original idea, even tho your entry could be equal or better on a technical level.

For the Washed-Up Superhero challenge, we were all starting with an existing character so in that case, is it really necessary to have 10 points allotted to "concept"?

When I'm judging, and maybe its just me but it always seems like; 10's when you look at it and say "that's genius!!!111," 9 is when you look at it and say "yeah, that's a really good idea," 8's a good idea, 7 average, 6 is "well I can think of better ideas," and where's it go from there? What's a score of 1...you modeled a coffee mug when the theme was "space ships"?

On the other side of what I'm getting at it, is presentation. That seems like something that should be really important, especially for those of us that will be looking to a cut a demo reel and market our skills, not to mention we're all "artists" so we ought to have some concern for how we present/display our work, and often times presentation can make a good model look great and vice versa.

I don't think a separate 10 point category is necessarily needed for presentation, or even fair for that matter, since not everyone can rig and light to the same level etc, but tossing it in as "concept and presentation" would let the judges give someone a few points for a good presentation vs. someone who just grabbed three random screen shots and pasted them together.

I know, I'm still new around here, and maybe shouldn't be poking at the system just yet as I'm sure there's a good reason it is the way it is, but I thought I'd throw out my two cents anyway.




As for theme, I'm liking either the athlete idea, because I was kinda kicking that idea around myself the other day, or the Swat/Military/Commando/Mercenary/Terrorist/Spec-Op/etc idea.

[omnicypher]

thats true, concepts arent always applicable, and presentation always is. during the last vehicle competition, i made a shopping cart, so i should have gotten a 1 in that catagory, lol.

[ryvick]

that was one kickass shopping cart though. yeah i think judging 5/5 concept/presentation would be better. it would weigh the votes very evenly i guess. also i think the team idea sounds really cool but if one member slacks off then it would kill the other team members entry overall (or if one of them doesnt finish on time). it is very tricky when you try to pair up ppl but at the same time it could work very well as well if all goes right (thats what you gotta do in real life anyways).

[Oniram]

im thinking...Olympic athlete. 8.8.08 is coming up, maybe that could be the start date, and anyone could pick their favorite athlete and model them...

[setschaos]

I think that making it an option to do a one man team sounds good. But, the main reason everyone (and I'm mainly just speculating) participates in the Low Poly Challenge is for brushing up on their game modeling skills. Certainly, they aren't improving their high poly modeling skill. I think that every now and then, there should be a little side note on the competitions where people have the opportunity to either choose to take up a team mate or continue in the competition by themselves.

Another idea: maybe we could have a competition where there are two areas; one where a group of people model an un-textured model then voting starts, then a second section where people come in and pick their favorite model, texture it (people who made the model can texture if they'd like as well, but can not vote on their own base model) then voting begins for the textured versions too, it can be like a 20 day, then 15 day competition so that it may be a little longer than a month, but two competitions are done at once almost. It could make for an odd twist in a challenging but real-life-instance kind of way.

[Novian]

I agree that a comp that focuses on real life instance would be extreemly good for any and all. For instance a game resource model (i.e the hand that holds the gun in a FPS, a cockpit for a flight game, or a small environment for a 3rd person game). Something that a real company would ask you to create would be great practice to someone looking to get into the business.

Cheers~

[omnicypher]

that would be interesting to have a low poly competition that didnt use textures, kinda like the sculpting competition, so that the actual form of the model and its topology are the focus, instead of its paint job. but the texturing half of it would probably end up with similar results and be difficult to judge, i would think.

teams are cool, but everyone should always be prepared to pick up for thier partners slack and be open to different approaches. teams require more coordination and a good distribution of small tasks for efficiency. thats why in the real world, we have team leaders that have authority. as artists, we all have to be picky about little details, and without managment, this could lead to disputes, slowing down progress. on the other hand, comprimise isnt usually that difficult, and the bonus of having someone else who cares about the work as much as yourself makes the end product much better through constructive critisism.

it would be cool to have a hand modelling competition. the best hand topology ive seen was from ben mathis, but improvments could be made.

[BenniKImmel]

Thing is though, in the real world if your on a team and someone slacks off to a point of ruining your goal *which would be easy to do here* youd most liekly get fired.

[Oniram]

very true. teams here could be very problematic...because these competitions just for fun basically, there is no guarantee that a person will finish. their personal life usually gets in the way (school, job, etc). and then they find themselves with an unfinished project.

im speaking mostly from experience. lol. ive got many projects that i start (most of the time just ideas in my head) and never finish.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

more ideas:

over-exaggerated

and, old people.

[funkdelic]

Team environment :D

[Novian]

BiG-ToE: I like your old idea. What about "Older Than Dirt" : Either character or item that is really old.?

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

BiG-ToE: I like your old idea. What about "Older Than Dirt" : Either character or item that is really old.?

Anything old enough is a pile of dust. I'll start sketching...

[BenniKImmel]

When is polling gonna start?

[Chung Wong]

Seeing as everyone is throwing out suggestions, do you think it would be better if there was a section for next gen specs and one for really low poly specs?(DS?PSP). I want to get into the games industry and these comps benefit me hugely. I'd like to see them a bit more focussed though.

Also, with poopipes suggestion, There are not many environment comps around. Maybe a section for this topic should be made too. I for one would like to be able to add an environment or two to my folio but simply do not know how to go about it. No good... But it's my bad, maybe someone can make a tut or add a link?

[Perversonality]

The problem with environments is that you only ever get one or two completed entries. Perhaps if environment doesn't win then a stand/mini-environment/diorama for the model could be included in the brief to bring the model more into context

[ryvick]

environment objects could work too. this way you dont have to make the whole environment but atleast part of it would get you in the right step.

[omnicypher]

we could make a specific collection of modular environment props: like pillar, wall, arch, window, door, low wall, and stairs that all add up to 6000 triangles. time and place could be up to the artist, like future spaceship, or ancient egyptian, or modern industrial, or wild west, or forest temple. with a small collection like that, entire levels could be roughed out.

or we could be more vague and say "next gen post appocolyptic facade, 10,000 triangles"

[Relderson]

maybe something thats NOT a character :)

[grommie]

really like the team ideia.
My suggestion is something about nerds and geeks....is unusual, but I think it's really cool.
I like the Napoleon Dinamite stuff...could be nice ;)
This is gonna be my first low poly challenge entry, so I'm very excited to do some.