Challenge #788 Voting CLOSED

This week’s theme:

poisonous

  • Engineer
  • RayVelcoro
  • Maxime
  • alf0
  • kittrick
  • purbosky
  • Arethyu
  • Aminta
  • fcharr
  • Millani
  • str11
  • HIST0R
  • icyou520
  • boblybill
  • eyelight
  • mziskandar

0 voters

After 2 days of voting, a winner is declared: The voting will close on: Wed, Aug 1, 2018 11:00 PM.
The winner picks the theme for next week.

[ If the winner doesn’t supply a theme before Thursday 22:30 GMT, the organizer will select the theme. In this case, the winner’s theme will be used the next time we are lacking a theme on Thursday 22:30 GMT.:-)]

Having selected the theme, the winner will not be eligible to enter that week. They may however still submit an image, but it won’t be included in the voting.

This week’s winner:
ba-feature-20180803-wc

Pure Entries

Engineer: poison



RayVelcoro: Snake Head



Maxime: Thirst



alf0: the witch poison hut



kittrick: The Widowthorn



purbosky: Lethality Ensues



Arethyu: Poisonous nature



Aminta: Snake and Tea?



fcharr: Venom



Millani: What’s Your Poison?



str11: Poison blue dart frog.



HIST0R: Poisonous Substances Transport System



Open Entries

icyou520: Medusa

(I will consider this Open (Snake Heads from TS and Figure is from MBL with additional sculpting))



boblybill: Snake



eyelight: “What profit it a man if he gain the whole world but in this enterprise lose his soul?”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

(Open: MakeHuman, flags from wiki)



mziskandar: Poison:UPBGE



Non-competing Entries

FlyingBanana: Pill Poisoning



OLG: Dance with the Widow



beau11: Poisonous Flash



Helge: From Grimm’s Gift Shop: Collateral Damage



RobertT: SOCRATES: LESSONS FOR THE NESCIENT



I was thinking, how come there are no entries related to Australia? It seems like an obvious thing to do for this theme…

My first thought was the recent death in the UK due to novichok poisoning, to be honest Australia never even crossed my mind. Are you basing the thought on that Australia has so many poisonous animals?

I was about to bump this thread with this interesting video about how the Earth bumbles along…

I was expecting at least one Fugu entry. Predicting entries is becoming increasingly difficult… - Which is a good thing. Although, I would have liked to see @fcharr’s take on Alice Cooper’s Poison. :slight_smile:

Dang, didn’t even cross my mind. I was inspired by batman’s Joker, at least for the colors :slight_smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX8TCMqZbtg :stuck_out_tongue:

Just realized a silly thing: Right now, some people have 3% of the votes, and one person has 2%. However, 3% of 38 is around 1.14, which means that they all have 1 vote, but somehow different percentages :wink:

I suppose there is a little monkey doing the computations on the server…

I like when I see the “replying…” from Milani taking awhile, That means critiques are on there way. :grinning:

Some comments:

Engineer: Looks very dangerous and mystical. The book looks very nice.

RayVelcoro: I can’t help but to see its nostrils as eyes and the teeth as little arms. If I didn’t knew better, I would even want to hug it! Loved the warm colours and the chaos of the wires.

Maxime: As said before, very nice story. The bird is also beautifully detailed. It must’ve taken quite a while to make this!

alf0: A true witch’s hut, creepy jars included! I just think the glare effect is a bit cheesy.

kittrick: Nice colours, specially the glow of the flower. The thorns were a nice touch. The only weird thing is that the petals look a bit too regular (similar sizes and angles).

purbosky: A classical sci-fi hazard: Looks very deadly, and breaks very easily :slight_smile:. I liked the monochromatic look.

Arethyu: Really nice colours and lighting; I loved that grass! The little spider web was also a nice touch.

Aminta: I prefer my tea without snakes, please. Although, the tea looks like concentrated poison! The model of the cup and the snake look nice, but the materials look really weird somehow. Are they pure diffuse?

fcharr: This reminds me of an old Mario game with stairs and a gorilla throwing barrels. I liked the green/purple colours. I just have no idea what is happening :wink:

str11: Really nice model, and the skin looks awesome too.

HIST0R: For some reason this makes me think of a game console, maybe an Xbox, or maybe a desktop from alienware… The 6 little legs are really cute!

icyou520: I guess the medusa just petrified herself (and the viewer)! I really liked the game of lights and shadows here.

boblybill: Is the camera really close, or is that a huge snake? The snake looks a bit friendly actually, like it is just curious.

eyelight: This looks a bit like the collages I had to do at school, with a bunch of stuff in unrealistic proportions. May looks a bit robotic, but I think it helps the composition here.

mziskandar: Well, that snake is not going to bite anyone anytime soon, not before it manages to untie itself! Though I can’t help but feel unsafe by not seeing its head…

FlyingBanana: Repositioning the pills really helped the composition. I also liked the idea, nowadays medicine can be a true poison if used improperly.

OLG: I think I’ll pass this dance, thank you. They are called widows for a reason! Although, I read that their poison is not deadly for humans. I liked the overall decayed look of the scene.

beau11: Nice sculpt. Can’t say that I know flash well, but it reminds me of sculpts of the same character, so you at least got close enough. Like you said, he is missing the lips. Btw, have you seen the video from BlenderGuru where Andrew gives feedback on several models, including one of Flash? Maybe you would find it useful.

Helge: That worm ate too much, that’s why it got sick! I loved its face. But maybe it saved Snowwhite from a similar fate…

RobertT: The first thing that came to my mind when I saw your entry was Raphael’s The School of Athens. The overall symmetry, not only of the arcs, but also of the objects (chain on the left, scroll on the right…) is very characteristic of such paintings. I find it really interesting how your entries require a certain knowledge from the viewer to be understood. It is sometimes like poetry.
By the way, is the basin in the middle tilted? It doesn’t seem to be parallel to the floor.

Goddamn this privacy-violating website :stuck_out_tongue:! On the other hand, being able to quote the future is also quite cool.

4 Likes

@Millani - Thank you very much for your words!

School of Athens is one of those special classic paintings that can draw in viewers, keep them there a while, making them think while expressing something potentially profound and attaining artistic and historical significance.

I tried to put a lot into this, in terms of content and thought. There is, for example, a “hidden in plain sight” “lesson” about Truth right above Socrates’ head:

image

The basin is tilted and tainted, and that’s part of one the “lessons” in this piece (in terms of perception / reflections).

Thanks again for your comments!

1 Like

That is indeed where I got the inspiration for the sculpt. Andrew Price is a lifesaver. I wanted to do this because I didn’t want to have to worry about the ears :stuck_out_tongue:

I noticed that, and was asking “Is that Chinese? Nah, must be just some random pattern.”. Silly of me thinking that something you make is just plain random :smiley:

Even back in the days, medicine was pure poison - even if used properly. :wink:
(e.g. using mercury to cure syphilis)

A short while ago, I noticed this as well. (When ‘calculating’ the winning entry.) @bartv is looking into this. Maybe the discourse devs can do something about it.

I can live with that. Btw. the image reminded me of Indiana Jones and a wagon full of snakes.

And… the winner of Weekend Challenge 788 with 42% of the votes is… Maxime!
Here’s to all the great participators…


Thirst

2 Likes

@Maxime, congrats! Awesome render.

@Millani, thanks as always. You are correct. Black widows can kill the young, old and folks with compromised immune systems but typically only make healthy people sick for a while.

Growing up in west Texas they were everywhere. Remember playing with them as a kid. They are kind of pretty.

1 Like

Congratulations for @Maxime, a perfect blend of simple yet strong story along with a quality render!

Thanks @Millani for the comments! The story in my render is kinda subtle, and need zoom in on some details to help understand it. The red lamps on the left canister top, as indicated by the warning, signifies that the container unit isn’t properly sealed. The biohazard sign that I incorporated on the left of the watermark, and ‘Level 3’ text on the right canister, are meant to tell what the purple substance is: a biohazard level 3 virus (initially I wanted to place it on the right canister, and made some purple spills too). The title, combined with these two facts, foreshadows an impending doom. This was inspired by an early scene in one Resident Evil movie, actually. One big critic however, without a doubt, is the lack of background. Already made table and wall objects (even ‘borrowed’ a limb from MBL model) but scrapped them later as I lacked the motivation and time to do detailed background.

A very nice render you have too, though it took a while to notice the robot hand. Must be a powerful robot to drink radioactive materials (as all I see in movies they’re always depicted drinking oils :grinning:). I like the glow effect and that rusted metal textures.

Actually all the materials were BSDF. I think the weirdness came from using low resolution texture maps. I decided to try UV unwrapping everything, except the snake. I also noticed a substantial difference in branched path tracing compared to the original algorithm.

Originally I was going to make a poisonous drink, but then I wasn’t sure if it looked poisonous enough. So I added a snake.

Thank you for the thoughtful critiques! I think one thing that really pushed Maxime’s render beyond is that the effect of the poison is palpable. Without a someone to be poisoned the story is really incomplete! It’s a good reminder of how powerful storytelling can be when creating an image. :slight_smile:

Well deserved win, Maxime!

Also thx for the comment, Millani. Something I look forward to every week.

I used the Batman Forever font in mine, simply out of laziness!

Thanks @Millani for your comments, and well done everyone !

Here is a clay render, without dof:

1 Like