Who's Sandy?

I'm sure he meant Hurricane Sandy. And he may be without electricity because of her.

ohhhhh lol

Lol at the title, is this a Koala

Well done, looks really nice and original.

very sweet Idea, good luck author and very good work

Nice one author but I think you need to do some refinement on birds shadows to make it standout more.. GL!

thanks for the comments everyone.
bcabilan: thanks for your great feedback. Still learning how to shadow etc: I will explore your ideas and try to develop my skills more.

Fabulous piece of work author...well done

nice one

Really cute.

Congrats!!

congrats

awesome

Awesome work I love her expression..... Santa had better watch out....

This is fantastic!!! Love everything about this art piece = )

This is amazing work.. The sbs is great! If I only could.. Wow wow wow.. Fav!

Awesome

This is making my juices flow and I have a good feeling must add.

amazing digital drawing Good luck!

Greatest as always........................... wooooooooo.... you are my favorite author...

It's always a pleasure to see your work! You don't post much but when you do..............SPEECHLESS!

That's so surprising for me to find your entry here, seems like you worked for that piece a long time and this contest is the perfect place for submitting whatever you like to do . Fav immediately and high marks. But, let me give some strict critiques (even though I consider it's a kind of perfect entry). In perspective, the positions of her legs are not much different (the right one is a bit closer to us) but, to me, their proportions are different considerably, the right boot is quite longer. About Santa's "poster", seems like the piece in her hand is from the one on the wall, but I can't find they're fitted together (just if my presumption is correct). About lighting, definitely you used a complex lighting mode, with the strongest direct light from her back, but the light comes from her front is not very well managed when we consider the shadows. Base on the shadow on the bottom of the picture in her hand, the light comes from her front but lower than her hand, base on the shadow under her skirt, the light come from the position higher than her skirt. So, the front light is from somewhere as high as her belly! From that conclusion, you need more shadows, such as the shadow of the picture on her left arm, some shadows on the other side of the gun, etc. And the most important thing is her second shadow on her back, which is not as dark as the main shadow, but should be more convincing.
Phew, finally I showed you all that I can find here, hope it's not frustrating to you . You'll get one more first place for sure, even among the top work of the site .

Holy moly, this is some amazing work! Overall really good, but I LOVE that gun! Nice attention to detail like the graffiti.

This is totally a fav! Great job on this!

wow, this is fantastic work, love it

So Hot!

Fantabulous!!!

Another classic... fantastic detail...I`m taking note

Wow, Santa Claus little helper has gone wild and invincible Great work and congrats in advance

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Great work !

Knew this was done by you the moment I seen it in Hi Res, only one here who has that knack with photo manipulating to drawing, love the whole thing, don't see all the things Langstrum does, but I do see a serious problem at the center of her bosom, looks like a third one is starting ,lol. Very very well done. looks like a winner.

Normally I dont reply during an open contest, but an exception for everything.
@Glockman: it's not half painted, half photo. Everything is drawn/painted with only photo references as inspiration. Please see SBS. I dont see a 3rd breast, but nothing seems impossible these days .

what to say........ nothing is impossible for u ...... great work author ........

Totally awesome on so many levels. You took no shortcuts, there's such a lot of hard work apparent in this picture. Despite all the serious work put into it, it's still humorous and it looks like you had a lot of fun doing it. Could you share how long it took you to do this from start to finish?

Spectacular work, what else to say...

Great entry.The gun looks splendid.Maybe,color harmony should be little different,but it's a matter of taste.Congrats.Another fantastic work.

Where do I sign up for lesson, I will totally travel = )

I will car pool with Emik....WOW.

Wow, nice to see another masterpiece from you

Awesome Entry with classic touch..........Good Luck Author.

U r just awsome my friend....true artist.....i really dream to have artistic skills like u...

Amazing work!!!

Killer......and very encouraging SBS

JB

Congratulations, Waz!

Congratulations on a well deserved 1st place!

congrats Waz!!!!!!!!

Congrats Mr.Waz, another great art in your gallery. I expected much higher score tho. Hope to see you more in the future contests.

Thanks for all the comments. I'll reply a few.
@langstrum: about the legs, you're right. I messed it up a bit with the perspective. I wanted Sandy's right leg (on the left in the image) to be really coming to the viewer and therefore exaggerate the difference between the 2 legs a bit (together with a low perspective line). But then when I was doing the background I found out that some things wouldnt fit well with the position of her left foot and the walls. Also, it's a bit hard to see now if the walls are close to her or somewhat further away, due to this perspective. Ow well...
About the light, I might have made some mistakes with some light directions, but overall I think they fit well. In my view there are 3 lights: the one in the back, the one front up in the middle right and -very soft- light from under that bounces from the ground on her clothes, gun, etc. So then it's quite a puzzle when what object needs how much light . And about your expectations: a PXL entry is like a piece from a mandarin, you never know if they gonna like it (free from Forrest Gump...), So I'll see if I'll spend so much time again.
@Mad: Yeah, it was fun (doing all the details like the chain around her neck or dressing up the gun), but sometimes also frustrating. It was the first time that I made such drawing in Artrage (before, I just tried some sketches) and found out that if you work big, the program needs quite some time to progress changes (ie if you change a layer or make something bigger, things like that. And there was nothing wrong ith my pc). That keeps me off from a working flow. But ok, the drawing itself was also time consuming. I think I spent around 45-50 hours from the 1st sketch till the final. I'm quite sure I'd be faster in Photoshop (but it was more of a challenge for me to make it all in Artrage ).

For who's interested, I also captured the whole process of the drawing. It can be seen as a movie here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgtmmv_time-lapse-video-sandy-clowes-is-coming-to-town_creation

Congratulations for 1st place, great pic.

Congrats Wazo absolutely superb

Congrats, though I thought it should have scored higher too.

AMAZING!

Well congrats and not just on this 1st but congrats on the one thing NONE of us have done and I'm sure never will duplicate. STILL a flawless portfolio of 1st place winners.

I hope you don't mind the pedestal.......

Nice chop! And kudos to using your own stock photos! My only nitpick would be maybe the edges around the starfish you turned into a bra. They just seem a little hard. Other than that, well done!

Make a blue overlay over the model, so it blends better. ( create new layer of solid color - blue- right click on it create clipping mask so it only affects the model, Mode: Overlay Opacity-20%- more or less) You could make 2 clipping layers one blue on green so that you have a turquaz overlaying your model.
Your background also has some noise that should be present on the model, so you could either lower her opacity -95-98% or add a noise over.
There's also a masking problem on her hip, use some clone stamp to cover over her human skin :P

Thank you very much for the suggestions I'll start working on them right away.

Nice looks good ..gl.

Water is always hard to work with...This image have a great concept author and u could turn it in fabulous entry...I would like to give u few advices because i had similar problems when i created my underwater entry's...For better blending,solid color layers with different blend modes are always good thing to do. Val gave u advice to use blue overlay layer,and that is good thing to do. I would gave u advice to use dark blue overlay layer,with opacity set between 20-40%. Also in this case u have to make whole scene a bit slighter and for that dark brown layer with color blend mode and goldish layer also in color mode will done the work. Play with opacity of course. And now magic stars,add on top of these layers,dark green soft light layer,play with opacity and u will get crazy blue-green water color,and goldish layer will gave some nice mood.And finally u could add on top of these,blue/gray layer,blend mode set to color,with a low opacity max10%. And thats it,great underwater scene. And u could create some bubbles behind the purple thing to achieve better depth...Sorry for this novel author...

erathion.. if you make us have to do a report on your comment.. you will receive a severe beating.... (oh.. very nice chop by the way author... giggle snort) smooches erathion.. just kidding!!!

author.. you should be very proud of all the work you have done... I'm exhausted after looking through your sbs ... GOOD LUCK

His comment was very helpful an I hope I was able to create the mood and feeling the were helping me achieve. I'm glad you appreciate the work because it was a very lengthy process. Either way I was very pleased with the end result

Now, who wouldn't help a hot naked chick lying on the ocean's floor . Glad you like the end result.

You'd be a fool not to help

Yes! that looks much better! One of the best entries! GL author!

Congratulations!

Congrats...

Congrats for 3rd, cool