Forums » Art & Creativity » OFFICIAL CONTEST: Genre Mascots Art 2015

It seems it is not meant to be. There is not enough furniture in my temporary room here for me to line and color without pulling an important muscle or three. I need those!



The entries this year are truly magnificent. The RPR has such an incredible crop of artistic talent. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final jumble!

Moki and sland, I am thrilled to see you guys got yours in under the wire.

The jumble will be poorer without a wizard from a Wizard, but alas, Time marches on! And the entries this year are all around jaw-dropping. It will be very hard to make final decisions, but the time has come!

These are all amazing entries! Can't wait to see who wins! Good luck, everyone!

So much fur @_@ never want to do fur again.

Thought I wouldthrow this in last minute.
I kinda thought there was a demons group, as it is an imp.

If not, fantasy I guess

Oh man I'm so sorry, but this missed the deadline!

You did an incredible job on the fur! You deserve a rest.

Since this seems to be the year of showing WIPs, here's the process I went through when jumbling!

I started with several hours of practice jumbles, to get a sense of how the characters could relate to one another, in color, texture, theme, height and etc.

Then I put ALL the entrants into one canvas and started the final journey. My first few attempts tended to look like this: There's close to 25 characters in this image, but some of them are so buried all you can see is bits of hair or a finger or a staff peeking out. Just way too cluttered, can't tell anything about what's going on.



From crowds like this, I decided that since we had so many fliers, I would see if I could make a more vertical composition work, and started moving winged beasties upward to flap around the head of Heimdall's magnificent geode golem. Other, smaller critters start climbing on the golem itself, such as the Sanne cat and Hwothumb's peacock beatle. MadRatBird's fawn druid (who I am convinced is related to Petrichor's fawn woman from year 2013) declares that it is somehow related to the raising or maintenance of the golem, and moves up to nestle between the golem's knee and chest, creating a beautiful contrast of browns and purples over the golem's geode center. The horns look like filagree. From this point on, golem and fawn druid are inseparable.

This unburies Goat's horror creature, who floats to the right of the composition where we can better see both her creepy hands and the monstrosity peering out from her hair. Unfortunately, this upsets sland's pirate, who starts bearing down on her with guns drawn. But wait! Saseth's cyborg demon gets in between them to break up whatever is about to happen. Around this time I also discover that EpicSnail's hero cat has great admiration for FreeJayFly's drow rogue, and the cat starts to follow him around.



This is infinitely better, but still extremely crowded. Some of the characters are also showing issues when put on top of a non-white background, where coloring got smeared outside the lines, and I start to struggle to find positions that compensate for this.

Sland's pirate's head is blending into the golem's leg in her current position, so she is allowed to advance on her target. Highjinx's regency lady takes a few steps back so that her blue gown can play off of the purples in the golem. As soon as she does so, Virusghost's bulky super hero sidles in from off screen in an attempt to cozy up to her, only to have Fallen's demon body block again!



I take a break and show the composition to a few people, whose main reaction is overwhelm. The time has come -- I have to do even more cutting. This part always sucks.

The dryad, the cyborg demon and the pirate step out and the composition immediately becomes easier to understand.



Goat's cthulu maiden boots out the space yetti and takes a spot that makes it look like she's coming out of the unicorn's magic pot. Team Moki's wolf shamaness turns inward to prevent her staff from merging with the fawn dryad's staff. These two moves reveal much more of f0x's lobster alien, thankfully showing off more of the sci fi that's left in the composition.



The superheroine battles it out with the super tank, but super tank is saved when it becomes apparent that his absence makes the jumble 200% less manly. Instead, superheroine gets a bit bigger, and ends up pushing out the peacock beetle. With all the disruptions, the cat climbs off super tank's shoulder and goes to beg the unicorn for attention.



In jogging what I thought might be the final composition around, I discover that there's suddenly enough room for one more small character, and the pirate lady and the cyborg demon duke it out. The pirate edges cyborg demon out by not needing special placement for her feet and retakes a place in the final jumble at the last moment. Once she's there, I love her there. The thicker lines and more stylized look somehow seems to balance out the three more "realistic" pieces around it. She no longer seems intent on murdering cthulu maiden, and is instead listening to lobster alien's war stories.



From here, it becomes a matter of adjusting contrast throughout to help the characters look more related, and not look washed out when posted on the parchment background.

Here we go a raffleing! All jumble winners are entered into a drawing for additional prizes, on top of their Hourglass of Epicness. Remember that each person can only win one additional prize, so if the same person comes up twice I will do a reroll. Here's the numbers:

1. REROLL!
2. Degu
3. Epicsnail
4. f0x1nth3b0x
5. FreeJayFly
6. Goat
7. Goo
8. Halothane
9. Heimdall
10. REROLL!
11. Hibariharu
12. REROLL!
13. Highjinx
14. MadRatBird
15. Moki (with weird0freak and RevanStar)
16. Sanne
17. sland
18. Tate (and CindarellaPop)
19. virusghost18
20. REROLL!

We had one reroll and one duplicate, so here's another shot...

If our piece wasn't chosen, are we allowed to use it as a character?

Absolutely!

Just looking at the amazingly well done artwork makes me smile. I wish I could of entered this year but I was too busy. Just wanted to say awesome job to everyone

Oh man, reading the rundown of how the jumble got to the final version is just about as entertaining as the jumble itself! c': Cute lil' unicorn, summoning eldritch abominations.

I love the idea that Snail's cat hero has an admiration for the rogue I drew. I do my best not to get too attached to pieces I make for contests of this calibre. :'D So I attempted to make him a little less like most rogues I make (generally leaning on a chaotic good spectrum; think more like Assassin's Creed style rogues as my typical template).

But yeah, in the end, since he was not to have a great story attached to him, it both tickles and humbles me that a super hero would find my rogue admirable, thus making me think that the rogue I made really comes from the default template I put a majority of my rogues on when it comes to story writing.

The cat looks like an amateur super to me -- I think it's because his cape is clearly just a piece of fabric tied around his neck, not an actual piece of clothing. The way a kid might use a blanket to dress up as a super hero. When I saw the way the cat was looking at the rogue, and the fact that they both had red cloaks and black face masks, I thought, maybe the rogue is what inspired the cat to want to become a super hero in the first place. Rogues do have many traditionally feline qualities, after all, taken to a "super" degree... Silent movement, sneakiness, lethal surprise attacks! Perhaps super kitty saw the rogue doing some super cool parkour out his or her bedroom window one night, and said, "I'm going to grow up to be just like that guy!" And thus the rogue gained a young, enthusiastic, but not particularly seasoned feline sidekick, whether he wanted one or not.

*high pitched squeal* I LOVE THE JUMBLE SO MUCH!! It was so fun watching Tibby being... well, a cat in a hectic environment. I also adore her final position and how teensy tiny she is!! I'm glad she's taking so well to all the mascots, I was afraid the goblins had made her a bit skittish but I think all the superheroes make her feel very safe. A word of advice to the unicorn: be mindful of the dangly noisy bits on the costume, Tibby is a kitty after all!

I'm sad that some of my favorite entries couldn't make it, but I really hope everyone will give it another shot next year!

Also I'M FREAKING OUT SO MUCH OVER WINNING A TOTE BAG AAAHHHHHH THANK YOU. I've been wanting one so bad since the first time they came out. ;-;

this is the most stunning compilation yet, it really showcases what a vibrant and creative community RPR has!

i loved reading your commentary behind the jumbling, kim - i had no idea so much thought and planning was involved! reading about how you positioned them to all have a relationship with each other is a form of art in itself. congrats everybody!

I feel like my superheroine and Virusghost's superhero should work together to fight crime anyway. And Epicsnail's superkitty can be the sidekick until we get him a real cape, then it's down to business.

Hah, this was neat, seeing how you sorted all the entries into the final jumble. Looks like that took a lot of work!

A bit of a shame my entry didn't make it in, but oh well. There's always next year!

Congratulations to all the winners!