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 but the blur doesn't really work for me...gl..

Author I think you should give the hydrant the same blur as the dog, they are about at the same depth in the image. Another tip for the dogs hair: they look a bit hard edged... maybe try if this works: open a new layer on top, select a small blur brush (3 or 4 pixels) then check "select all layers" on top in PS and go over the edges of the hair. You'll see they'll blend much nicer that way, it's worth the time you put in it.

But it's up to you, it's your image.

Thanks Toothpick134 for the suggestion.
I think you are mentioning hydrant cause the car with road and footpath without blur grabs away attention from dog. I tried hydrant mouth without blur, the prespective wr2 dog goes bizarre. Moreover that mouth becomes too prominent.

Suggestions are most welcome.

Don't blur the hydrant, blur the dog just a bit.

Thanks robvdn for a good suggestion on dog hair. I did changes using select-modify- contract and inversed it, then gave it a blur. It blended nice as you suggested. Toothpick134 intended depth correction, yet perspective remained same, out of match with hydrant. I tried to give hydrant's shadow on dog, then dog no longer looked the hero of image. Enlarged hydrant and perspective changed for worse.
Changed shadow angle of hydrant and dog using soft brush, then car source image had to be changed because of its shadow angle. As CMYK46 suggested, I tried to keep hydrant as it is and blurred the dog a bit, it seemed the dog is looking at somewhere else and not at hydrant. also the hydrant becomes too prominent. Thanks CMYK46.

I couldn't find a good background better than this car at such angle as hydrants used to be adjacent to road and regrets, couldn't find a better angled dog smelling intelligently.
Finally, I think, oopps, was it wrong compilation (

dog hair edges have green color no need that, beter same background color.
[only edges]

Idea is nice and images fits together but u could make it even better...Blur is still to big IMHO, and u should work on that a bit more...As for the dog,use small smudge brush ,strength around 80 to create basic fur on hard edges part...be free and loos your hand when u do that...then u will get the best result. After basic fur play a bit with the size of the brush to make fur even more realistic. Now is good but with few adjustments this could be very very good entry...best of luck

I am with CMYK on this one

If it was up to me I would scrap the background and use the original background of the dog. I would expand the background a bit horizontally and finish the base of the hydrant and place it in the background. Making sure to match the depth of field to the surrounding area where the hydrant is placed. Good luck!

Thanks Chalty for the suggestion. I appreciate that.

@robvdn. I saw and realized, then decided.Thank you very much, I done the changes as you suggested.
@Toothpick134, hope the reduced blur confirms your comment. Thanks for pointing it out first.
@CMYK46, you suggested an altenative, thinking I may accept any one. Thanks. I did changes with first and for me, it came out nice. Thanks CMYK46.
@Sanjugs, Thanks for the minute observation on hair. I did the work as you and robvdn suggested. Hope the changes are satisfactory.
Hi! erathion, thanks very much for your ideas. Best was your 80 with smudge. robvdn, I think it is about version.
@Mario, Thankss for pointing out.
@Chalty669, Thanks. I wanted to put my hydrant on roadside. So I didn't try the grass.

wow.. very nice

It looks like a real diorama.

good job.....

very nice work author...building really look like a model...gl

Congratulations!

Congrats for 2nd

Congrats...

Congrats on second place

thank you all

Looks a bit odd without zipper pulls to be separating the teeth. Very interesting concept, though!

Amazing concept!

nice work...gl

Nice job, my only criticism is that the lion head looks like its balancing on its point on the ground and isn't too realistic. If you lay it flat on the ground and adjust the shadow accordingly it will look better. A few other fragments of broken plaster would also look good but that's a fair bit of work :P

too much distortion on rear part of tiger.....otherwise brilliant idea.

GO TIGER GO!!!!