You can't really tell you used the contest source, since a simple black and white square made with the rectangular marquee would accomplish the same thing...

Now, if you made the chess pieces better resemble the male and female figures, THAT would be creative, but this really is too CBR to be of much relationship to the contest source...

@MossyB, Thank you for your input. I agree on the square thingy, but I guess that's what SBSes are for, eh? Plus the source had the texture for the "marble-y" feel.
My first thought was the male & female figures only, but I lack the skills to make them look 3D from their current appearances.
The entire thing is the source pic after liquifying, warping & blending.

The perspective of the play figures is not the same as the board, they should be leaning back a lil more

Will try to fix it ASAP. Thanks.

I tend to agree with MossyB's comment, the source wasn't really needed to create this. I'm also curious about your response, you say you lack the skills to make the male/female source figures look 3D yet you say you created the chess pieces yourself with liquify and warp. The figures are a very simple form and much easier to add dimension to them than to create the complex shapes of chessmen from scratch. You don't show any source for the chessmen but they're all in correct perspective with complex details. Wonder how this is possible?

@spaceranger Thank you for your comment. What I meant wast I considered it'd be easier to create figures from scratch rather than warp the original figures. I can create simple constructions with warp & liquify, but am not as fluent with it as many other talented members.
As for the image, if you're suggesting I outsourced it, I'm kinda offended. The placing was more of a hit & trial (hence the sloppy perspective) & details were very generic.

SBS step 4 shows multiple layer above each other hence the lines.
SBS step 5 shows the strokes I made with pen tool. These ain't complex IMO.

There's nothing wrong with using reference as a guide which is all I suggested, it is difficult to draw those chess pieces from memory and they are most certainly more complex than the male/female icons. It was your statement that you lacked the skills that prompted me to ask.Your SBS doesn't show any steps in the liquify/warp creation of the pieces,step 4 just shows a silhouette with elliptical ridges and step 5 the lines added for detail. If you did create them without reference I'd say you do have the skills to have made the figures work contrary to your statement. Creating the pieces with liquify and warp without a base drawing seems a lot more difficult than drawing them digitally which is a more logical approach to me.

The pieces are standard pieces & their elliptical bases made it possible for me to make them look 3D. The original shapes were too plane. I couldn't get them to stand believably on the board. Now that I think of it, I could've used bases & snipped their legs, but that's for another time I guess. I agree with the logical approach but I tried, couldn't, hence changed the idea.
As for the reference, I first drew the silhouette using Pen tool, filled it, then warped the pieces accordingly.