Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Recent Competition Pictures

I'm really behind in posting these, BUT here are my latest photos from Faerie Folk.  I'm still hanging in there, but our current assignment is a mutha -- lol I'm horrible at making more than one pic at a time (which is required for this assignment), so we'll see what happens...o_O....anyway.......feel free to check out the actual comp threads to see all of the amazing shots from the competitors (well worth the time, kid you not) and read my accompanying stories - I linked each in the titles below.


Assignment #3:  Fairy Tales
We had to come up with our own fairy tale, and adjust it to be a Good or Evil story depending on the orientation of our model.  Ennui is evil and she has an Asian-inspired background, so I chose a Japanese-influenced setting for the photo and story.  I never was completely happy with this pic and I swear I'm going to re-shoot it someday.  It was a lot of fun to work with though, the setting in particular.



So often we make extras for our pictures, and many times they are barely seen in the shots.  That was the case with Queen Sen - I spent a good amount of time (read = forfrikkinever) creating her in CAS, but she doesn't show up very well in my submitted picture.  This was an outtake shot of her that was sharpened a little in Photoshop




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Assignment #4:  The Five Senses
This theme has been done in a few other comps, and it always seems easy from the start, but coming up with something really good or unusual is really difficult.  Again, this wasn't any sort of spectacular pic -- and oh GAWD was my real life a mess during that time -- but I love the soft glow on the male model.  Much of that effect was with in-game lighting.  This is another photo that I wanted to do over again SO badly, and some of my outtake/unused shots were better than what I submitted, so I really want to work with some of those in the future. And oh yeah - I chose Sense of Touch.


...wish my hair was that doggone shiny...

An outtake picture that I edited a bit in Photoshop...I had waaaayyyyhayyhayyyy too much fun working with this guy... ;)




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Assignment #5:  Switching Roles!
The concept for this assignment seemed easy enough:  our faerie models had to switch their orientation, so Good faeries had to be Evil, and vice-versa.  I had intended for Ennui to be 'Good' in the first place, but the Good Faerie slots filled up fast and she went eeeeevil.  The execution of the assignment was another story -- there were nearly limitless possibilities of what we could do with our models and pictures, so focusing in on one idea was a huge challenge.  After the previous picture, I wanted something a little more lighthearted, so I thought 'hey, why not go to jail!' or something along those lines.


The rails, ceiling, and top half of the right-hand wall are edited in, and also the "stripe" on the ground, made to look grungy



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Assignment #6:  Chakras
Yee-haw -- there were several comments all around about how difficult this theme was in Blair's last cycle of Faerie Folk, and boy were they right.  The research was absolutely fascinating and I came away from it learning a great deal; coming up with the right image, however, was absolutely INSANE.  I had no idea what in the world I would do for this one.

We were allowed to choose from the seven Chakras, and by the time I saw the assignment thread there were only 3 left:  Manipura (fire/navel), Anahata (air/heart), and Vishuddha (ether/throat).  A couple of Chakras that I would've wanted to try were taken, and I wasn't sure I could do much of anything with what was left.  I decided to go with Anahata because of the air element, and by the time I made my decision and tried to reply, someone had taken it.  Vishuddha sounded a little more difficult, but also pretty intriguing....the element of ether particularly.  After reading a quick bit about it, I knew that's what I wanted to go with.  It was a pain in the ass to get just the right angles and lighting....you have no idea....but I was actually (for once) pretty happy with the final result, and I got a good avatar picture from the outtakes also.  I think my total time working on this from start to finish was around....17 hours or so?  Give or take a couple of hours (and over the course of three days).  That's pretty normal for me -- anywhere from, say, 12 to 20+ hours per shot.  Takes a long time when you barely know what the hell you're doing, no joke.


I laughed out loud when I finally found the right (and very unlikely) pose for this...it's hard to see, but I added the Vishuddha symbol into the vapor coming from Ennui's mouth. Also, the animal symbol for Vishuddha is the elephant, hence the tiny, almost invisible elephant statue in the bottom right corner.

I ended up with a great forum avatar from an outtake face shot


Two more plays a tweaking the coloring; the color for Vishuddha is blue so I experimented with a few other color options (too many to post now, heh)

Midsummer Night's Trance


Hypnotic Stardust



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Annnd I guess that's all for now.  We're on Assignment #7 currently (pictures representing two flowers of our choosing), and I'm literally shaking in my Cat in the Hat slippers -- I'm clueless as to what to do for these shots, and not in a good 'meh, I'll get a burst of inspiration at the last minute' sort of way...it's pretty scary.  BUT hopefully they'll be good enough to survive another round.  There are absolutely no guarantees with competitions.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for browsing!  There are so many more pictures I want to post....I think I'll end up making a companion blog to showcase outtakes, CAS pictures, and the like.  I usually take a couple or few hundred shots per project/assignment, and there's pretty much always something funny or cool that results from the masses.

13 comments:

  1. I have to agree with Jake here, because "Holy f*cking Hell" is what was going through my mind as well XD

    You, and Rexy, and all those other amazing editors out there - i hate you all (not really - i love you to bits :P) but you certainly know how to make somebody look like a fish outta water! ;) xxx

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  2. Man 17 hours on one shot makes me feel bad about churning out entries in a few hours lol

    Looks like I need to spend some more time with my simmies, maybe they will start doing magical shit like that for me lol

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  3. It is always a pleasure to look at your pictures! I am hoping that I can learn something or it rubs off!

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  4. Thanks ladies :D PK, psh, I need to be more efficient about finishing these pictures faster. It used to take me much longer than that! So I'm doing a *little* better about it. I gotta work on it much more though...

    And Random, lol I look at Harry's pictures (and some others like Rexy and Sereni) and feel like a complete fish outta water -- just jaw dropping shit that makes me swoon and wail in the same breath....and they're all so CONSISTENT with it!!

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  5. So are you!! I've never seen a picture from you, that I haven't been completely gobsmacked by :P (and I forgot about Harry :O how the fuck did I forget about Harry?!)

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  6. Mkay, I'm gonna have to take some lessons from you. All of these pictures are GORGEOUS! Fantastic job, m'dear!

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  7. Oooh Wow Cel, those pics are fantastically breath taking. You are truly an artist above words. These are gosh, I don't have words for how perfect and beautiful each one is. Your last set looks like it coupld be an MMORPH Game Cover, it is just stunning and the pose, it's lovely.

    It takes me around 12-20 hours for each and every pic I have ever done. The lessor being the least likely and the the 20 hours being more spot on for all my pics. I get caught up in the details I think.

    Your pics however, show the amount of time you put in, because they are not sims pics, those are art.

    You're inspiring me from my leave of absence, but I can never ever be on par with what you've put forth.

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  8. @AE! Thank you dude! I need to get caught up and read how your trip went...

    @Sereni!! *hugs* I haven't talked to you in so long! I'm sitting here with my jaw open and blushing like hell at your comment. That coming from you is just....I'd sound like crazy person if I told you how much that meant.

    That's just wild because your pictures are what I consider the platinum standard, the place I want to get to. When I first saw your hourglass picture, I just....loss for words. Just utter and complete loss for words. I sat there with my face in my hands just STARING at it for about 20 minute. It was art -- the colors, the setting, the whole CONCEPT. Surreal madness - every single sim that was falling in the hourglass was PERFECT. The whole thing made me speechless, and even though I knew I couldn't 'go there', I had so much respect and appreciation for it. Lol I just kept saying "how?? how??".

    So to hear those compliments from you is like hearing a compliment from Mr. Miyagi or Ip Man or something...I look up to you and Harry and Rexy and all of the other outstanding sim photographers and editors around here.

    Lolz annnnnd I ended up sound a little crazy anyway, didn't I? ^_^

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  9. Cel, you're so frickin amazing. These pictures are so, so, so great. I don't even have the words.

    Beautiful...

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  10. 20 hours for one picture? Holy shit ladies. The most I've spent on one is like, 2 hours, 3 tops.

    WTF.

    Then again, it really shows because a lot of the time my pictures blow. I honestly could NEVER come up with pictures that could live up to yours Cel. Like, I'm not even bashing myself here I'm being dead truthful here. Your jail shot- I thought that just the sparkles were edited in. And don't even get me started on your Chakra picture. I could NEVER get that ether effect. Ever. Ever ever ever.
    You're just too good damnit.

    where is it you reside? I need to map out a route to stalk you down and watch you work.

    x]

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  11. *creeps out of lurkers corner*
    When I saw this assignment make the rounds again, I was quite keen to see who would get Vishuddha.
    I remember picking it because I didn't think anyone else would and it might be a challenge, LoL it was!

    But... god you make it look effortless Cel! Truly exceeded all my expectations when I read you got that Charka. Your pictures always give me some hope that if I took the time to learn editing, I could create something equally as beautiful and inspiring as you have. As you always have since Sims 2 days :)

    And it's nice to know seren and I aren't the only ones who spend a crazy amount of time on one picture xD

    Okay enough gushing from me >.< Back to my corner.

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  12. @Jake, you nut you -- lol how many times do I have to tell you that your pictures DON'T blow???? And yes you COULD get that ether effect -- it's just made up of things in game with some color editing. Even without the editing it still looks interesting (and some parts even better without). Thank you immensely for the sweet compliment - but look at all the cool stuff you post on Rexy's thread!! And your comps? Psh, I don't even listen to your talk anymore dude! xP

    @Hush - hey! <3 thank you for visiting :D
    Vishuddha kicked my ass - it reeeeally reeeeally did, but I kinda picked it for similar reasons - it seemed like a big challenge (and I had done a fire pic recently, so I wanted something different).

    Thank you so much ...I didn't know you'd seen any of my TS2 pictures. I regret never having gotten the chance to experiment more with that game, and we had THE BEST pose/animation hacks! I was so hung up on trying to make story pictures that I never went out of my way to do anything else, and of course the stories never got written lol...maybe some day. I'd actually like to go back and see what can be done with TS2.

    You do the crazy time thing too?? Lmao - I swear if we had Collection files for CC, at least a quarter of that time would be shaved off from not having to search for items for picture sets...what a damn waste of time...and it takes me SO long to come up with ideas, and I change things too much. I'm working on being more efficient...my brain is too old to learn this stuff tho >.>

    And come out of your corner more often! xD

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