So who gets shrubbed this month?

Yay!

Congratulations everyone!

Congratulations everyone! Now, to work on the next...

Congratulations, everyone! I loved the photomanips, especially Daermon's Merian.

I don't understand anymore how winners are picked in the artisanals. My piece was painted (no photomanip), taking an ungodly amount of time to do and all it gets is a merit. A photomanip that takes at most 5 minutes to do scores higher. There's just seriously no point in submitting decent stuff of more traditional means anymore. So congrats to those who won, but I haven't been impressed by anything this month and I'm sorely dissapointed with my crappy merit.

As an interesting note, well-done photo manipulation can take quite some time. It isn't exactly 'scan, change overlay, done'.

Xiel's piece was quite nice. Now do a detailed one of Glumki (<-- greatest supermob ever.)

My favorite artisanal was definetly 'Tending the Bats' by Gavriel and I'm not as fond of 'Merian' by Daermon, which scored higher, because when I think of a Merian, I don't just think of a blue girl with a slight case of gills. But it's still really good! They all are, and art is so subjective, which probably means that sometimes how they apply to Lusternia counts as much as their artistic quality.

So, Kharaen, maybe yours got a lower score cause if someone who'd never played looked at it, they wouldn't actually learn anything about Lusternia? What I mean is, it's an amazing picture, but it could be a fairy picture anywhere, know what I mean? Everyone who plays knows who Ialie is, but a potential new person who was just purusing the art wouldn't.

Or I could be completely wrong and it was based on something else, maybe 100% subjective. All I know is, I'm quite pleased with my own Merit prize! Merit isn't crappy!

Xiel, the transliterated Hebrew is hillarious. Nice touch

I must admit, most of my pictures that won good scores took less time than the ones that got crappy scores.

My most well received piece was started at 10:30pm on the 31st.

lol wut?

Sounds like someone's a little jealous and has no idea what they're talking about. If you want to see the pictures I used in that I'd be more than happy to show you. I really don't think you should be complaining with all the wins that you have, though. I spent a looooong time on my April and July entries and they "only" got merit, whereas I spent a few hours each on my March and October entries and both of those got runner-up. Not that time spent is really an accurate judge of a picture's quality, anyway, as there are some really impressive speedpaints and some really ugly time-consuming pictures.

The judging may be strange but they're still, basically, free credits.



It's not just a blue girl with gills, it's also Celest. Sort of. And we're pretending that flutes exist. But I really don't think the "being Lusternian" part of it has much to do with artisinals anymore (if it ever did). As long as you call it Lusternian and it looks decent you have a pretty decent chance from the get go. I have noticed a few trends with artisinal winners (probably admin preferences) but there's no way I'm ever going to do some of those things, so I just do whatever the hell I want and if it happens to fit Lusternia at all I submit it. I usually don't win, but I do from time to time.

I've worked for days on a single photomanipulation.

When it comes to artisanals, I don't get jealous, I get envious. If I like something, I want to know how it was done so I can do something similar. I can seriously say nothing made me feel envious this round, or the last few rounds. It's particularly shaming for me to have a merit on a drawing that I consider one of my best. And I've never understood photomanipulation. To me it's just not real art, the closest it comes to is a collage. I don't know how anyone could feel artistic without grabbing a pen or paintbrush in hand and letting their ideas run amock on the canvas.

As your skills in photoshop increase, so does the feeling of expression and freedom in using a mouse and keyboard shortcuts.

Also, most photomanipulators these days use wacom tablets and other brush simulators.

Lusternian artisinals are not exactly the place for envy. I don't think I've ever been envious of any Lusternian art other than the really good people back in the day. If you want to feel like you suck, go look at DeviantArt's popular artists.



I don't think you know how good photomanipulations work. It's a lot more than just copying and pasting pictures. The closest comparison I can think of to "real" painting (isn't yours digital anyway?) is it's like starting with a basic painting (or several, as it were) already in place. Saying it's "not real art" is incredibly elitist and I think more than just the photomanipulation crowd would be quick to disagree and point out the flaws in your "real art". The forums require us to be civil, though, and I don't do civil criticism well.

I loved Incabulos's. I thought it was awesome. I liked all of them of course (especially Ymbryne's ;D..Veo is sexy!)

Firstly, I'd personally be glad if anything of mine ever won a merit since at the very least then it'd be acknowledged for being something in someone else's eyes. Then again, I've always been a very gratuitous person. Next, you might feel that there is no point in submitting 'decent stuff of more traditional means anymore' but I feel otherwise. Photomanipulation or traditionalist a submission might be, if one is better than the other in their opinion, then they'll mark it as such.




I've been meaning to get the descriptions of Glumki, Gwyllgi, and Lhiannan...being enemied to Glom is kinda problematic though. Maybe someone else would like to supply them for me...-nudge-



Shh, it's not Hebrew...it's..uhh...demon lord speak.



I'd have to go with Noola on this one and say that the amount a piece can be considered as Lusternia based plays a big part in how the judging of submissions are done. I mean, I could draw (or attempt to) a human monk stanced up with a pair of deerhorn blades with insane amounts of details and call it a Shofangi, but if it's just that man against say...a mediocre rendition of a huge Lusternia event such as the first raising of Zenobia, I'd say they'd be on par and the judges will just have to go with what they feel is best.

Ignore Kharaen, she's being sour grapes.

My favourite this month would have to be Feyrll's. Aww!

It was just adorable, wasn't it?

hmm, I thought it was highmagic runes

Err..right. Highmagic...runes. -sagenod-