Crimson CHOW #40 - Nature's Mistake - FINALS

[Pubic Enemy]

Crimson Character of the Week #40

»Nature's Mistake«

The best of the CHOWs will be picked by an anonymous poll in the Finals thread and the winner is given the opportunity to pick the theme of the next CHOW's design, as well as becoming the title banner for that week! So go hard, design something interesting and unique!



Rules:

• You must post at least one WIP in the WIP thread to be accepted into the final poll.
  
• Finals must be posted in the finals thread before the deadline.
  
• At least 3/4 of the character must be visible (minimum from the knees up).
  
• Only ONE submission per person in the finals thread.
  
• No fanart. We want to see your original, unique interpretations!
  
• Voting will be held for 5 days after the deadline.
  
• In an event of a tiebreaker, a winner will be chosen through a randomized name picker.
  
  

Deadline is Saturday, December 10th @ UTC: 23:59

-+|| FINALS THREAD ||+-

[CBinnsIllustration]

Might as well start off the Finals thread with my ugly beach/crab troll. Hopefully we get a few more finals this time round :)

[Pubic Enemy]

CBinns, that is a seriously gnarly troll. That's one of nature's mistakes if I ever saw one, LOL.

Send me a theme and brief for the next one when you get a chance.

[Lege1]

@CbinnsIllustration: Really great work again! The lighting, pose, and overall composition on this look really fun and interesting; I also like the cool and warm color palette with the browns and blues. Keep up the great work and looking forward to seeing you again in the near future forums while also doing best to participate myself.

@PublicEnemy: Why go by the name PublicEnemy when you could just go by A.I.? lol
Thanks again for hosting these forums and looking forward to future challenges to keep active and exercise artistic abilities.

I was thinking it might be a good idea to put a call out to artists to participate here via social media. This definitely has potential to blow up like the old days of C.A. it's just a matter of advertising it and letting people know it's here. I just found out about all this via a lot of google searching and I just got lucky and stumbled upon this. I was thinking also to consider putting something in the user agreement and in the forum rules that artists must create as human beings and not use A.I. prompted images.

[Pubic Enemy]

Hi Lege1, thanks for writing. I was looking at your website and you have a ton of cool art. Did you have the same username on CA.org?

Regarding advertising the site on social media, it sucks that it's hard to find this forum, but I don't think there's anything I can do about that for a couple reasons:

1. I posted about COW and CHOW in the original Discord chatroom for Crimson Daggers months ago, and it was pretty active at the time, but I got zero bites. And I know that some popular artists like Mohammed Agbadi occasionally recommend it to people, but that usually results in maybe 1 person who only stays for a couple weeks or a month.

2. I don't have, nor do I personally know anyone with the kind of reach needed to get the message out to a wide audience. There is the option of posting it on something like a relevant board on Reddit, but that still isn't likely to get bites, because...

3. People in general prefer Discord chatrooms or groups on social media to forums now. The only exception is people like you who were on or read about the old ConceptArt.org and would like to find something like it again. Forums are considered a very slow and old-fashioned experience now, and professionals don't want to use them anymore because Twitter/Artstation/Instagram/whatever gives them much more exposure for far less of a time investment. This is why EVERY art forum, not just conceptart.org, slowly died over the years. I think the last contest with sponsors and prizes on cgsociety was more than 10 years ago. Of course, what got lost in this transition was substantial discussions (sometimes with MULTIPLE PARAGRAPHS IN ONE POST!) and a comparatively slow and relaxed way of communicating with other Internet goons. And most sadly, no more of anything like Wesley Burt and Android Jones drawing divinenibru's notebook paper OC for fun.

There were attempts to re-capture the magic with forums like this one and Permanoobs, but they only lasted as long as the initial excitement. The founding artists always eventually became deadbeat forum dads because the incentive for them to stay and keep an interest in their own forum just wasn't there. Dave Rapoza, Dan Warren, and DK started this forum about 10 years ago, and the first 2 last posted about 9 years ago.


Also, fair point, but my name isn't Public Enemy, it's PUBIC Enemy. I saw Public Enemy mis-spelled in a tracklist and thought, damn, I'm using that handle first thing.

A no A.I. art clause is a good rule, but I don't think it will be necessary on this forum, because I don't think anyone but people who are interested in drawing and painting the old-fashioned way are gonna use an old-fashioned art forum.

[JosephCow]

I'm honestly surprised it's as active as it is still. I wish we did have more people though, I feel bad that some of these challenges don't get enough contestants because it is really fun. Eventually I will have time to do more of them again. I think there probably are more people out there that would be interested. But I don't know anyone with the reach to get it out there, either.

I think part of the appeal of discord and other current alternatives is that it's very immediate, which is cool. You are also more anonymous. But I really think I've made more meaningful connections on this style of forum, than on discord servers or Reddit.

[Lege1]

@Pubic Enemy: ah my total bad man, your name tricked me into thinking Public Enemy but since it's Pubic Enemy your nickname could be Zipper,lol. Thanks for all that info and I better understand the situation now. A lot has changed over the years like you mention and it's understandable why forums like this have become obsolete although I still love them very much and apparently @JosephCow appreciates them too. There's gotta be a lot more people out there that feel the same way, again it's just reaching them. It's understandable why Dave and the others don't have time for this here, most professional artists are fully immersed in work. I'm sure once I become busier, I will not be able to participate as much as I'd like either. These forums are a ton of fun though and at a good time pace and you can learn a lot, especially when people are open to sharing tips, tricks, and techniques; one can learn a lot just watching how each person evolves their images. I have always found it so exciting to post something and see others do the same and then watch it all evolve over the week, and then to especially see how the finals came out. I'm really glad we all at least have this here and thank you for the compliments on my work and yes I was the same user name on C.A., it's been a long time doing what I do and I really can't imagine doing anything else in life. Thanks so much again @Pubic Enemy!

[Pubic Enemy]

Thanks for your thoughtful replies, Lege. I also still appreciate forums, because I would rather read the dumbest thread on GameFAQs than any reply chain on Twitter. But there are at least enough people who still prefer forums to maintain a minimal level of activity on here, and there may be more, but I don't know how to reach them besides spamming it on as many boards as possible. Especially because people who prefer forums might not be spending a lot of time on any of the current high-traffic sites.

As Joseph said, the immediacy of chatrooms is nice, but I only like to use Discord if the channel is small (like the Study Buddy channel linked to up top). Bigger channels tend to be a wall of GIFs and emotes that hurt one's brain to read. That's one problem you would never have with something like IRC.

Yeah, Dave seems to be hustling 24/7 with professional work, producing content for his Patreon, and promoting that Patreon on Twitter. Art forums had value for professionals when they were the "place to be" because you'd find connections and jobs on there too, which tended to encourage spending more time on the forums in general. I wish that forums and all the other kinds of sites that used be common didn't get supplanted by a few big social media sites, but oh well.

[Lege1]

@Pubic Enemy: Oh for sure man! I total relate to what you are saying. I think a lot of people would still enjoy the forums, they just gotta know where to go. I have been hoping to find something like Conceptart.org forums again since the site sank. If we all keep on putting it out there on places like social media and maybe even go as far as private messaging artists with the forum link it might kick, who knows, it's worth a try. I know I will be telling artists I know about it and making a point to put the energy out to do that where possible. I would only hope people catch on.

I haven't really experienced Discord so I don't relate much to the channel concepts. I do get the power of IRC though and see that this site is running myBB which seems to be really good.

Yes, Dave is def on the grind in the times and has been for awhile now. Yes the forums of the past definitely lead to being discovered and gaining opportunities. I wish the same as you and think it's very sad that forums and sites of the past got supplanted by social media, I would have never have thought years back that this is what would eventually happen, it's wild.