The Energon Pub

There are a bunch of amazing pieces out there. In my catagory, I can safely say I have the worse piece. But I think I can do better and want to get to the next round.

My question is, do you vote for yourself or vote for the best? I can't in good conscience vote for me when I see two other guys way better than me. Is it wrong to vote for yourself?

I voted for the one I thought was best which was really diffecult, just click my sig and see why I don't think I will ever get to round 2!

I mean vote for yourself, grate that reflects what you think, which is in my opinion 0.
I mean if you vote yourself you don't reflect the overall opinion, it would be a wast of a vote, but that's just me.

Well, I didn't compete because I can't draw worth crap.

But, I would never vote for myself in a contest. For one, it's decidedly gauche. For two, if the point of the contest is to vote for the best, that's what you should be voting for, and most people aren't objective enough to separate out their ego (or lack thereof) in honestly determining where their work falls. I'd rather be on the "safe side" and vote for someone else. (For three, I don't think I'm the best at anything creative/contest worthy anyway. )

One predominant trend I see is people voting for the best art, NOT the best cover. Some of these covers that are in the lead are impeccably drawn, but either you can't tell who the spotlight character is OR it doesn't look like a spotlight cover at all.

First Gen wrote:One predominant trend I see is people voting for the best art, NOT the best cover. Some of these covers that are in the lead are impeccably drawn, but either you can't tell who the spotlight character is OR it doesn't look like a spotlight cover at all.

I suppose that's an artifact of most of the voters being artists. I have no natural eye for art technique whatsoever, so my choices were more composition-based. I tried to consistently look for the following in the covers I voted for so far:

Does it feature the lead character *and* sell their personality? There were a few really good covers I passed on because I didn't think they captured the lead character right. And others I passed on because, as you said, it didn't give the lead character the right focus.

Are the other two characters doing something other than standing around? It feels a little limp to me to have the two background characters just posing because you had to include them. Admittedly, this is more personal preference than an objectively important criteria - I like action art, not pinup art... but, pinup art *is* valid - but I do have to vote for which cover would attract my eye in a store. Had to pass on an otherwise really good Air Raid one based on this, but I'm glad to see the artist is still in the running.

Does it follow the assignment? One cover had a great head shot of Perceptor, but didn't have the other two characters or the setting. Another cover was wonderfully drawn, but didn't look like it was good for *coloring*. Too much ink shading and not enough cleanly defined lines.

Not that art style isn't important... there were two similarly-composed ones of Perceptor where one was drawn a bit better enough for me to choose it. But there's so many well-drawn covers here it tends to end up coming down to layout for me personally.

I agree with Jeysie.

Well, I got Bombshell, a design I know very little of, but I was so excited to draw them in detail. So I put his personality less focus on. Which was a bad idea, but like I said, I was more excited to draw them in detail. It was a very hard piece, confined to small area really kill it for me. It was a heavy task with three characters, plus it threw me off with the whole idea of room for the title. The background I done, would have been better.

Andrew Griffin got it down, great idea.

Now, he got my vote, but since he has so many, I would vote for my piece, so it would be so depressing, but I can't even log in to that site to save my own life.

Still with ideas so many got, I think Andrew it the best so far, but it was a hard choice among so many other good ones.

Having just gotten to voting on the Bombshell one...

I did like yours, NightFall. It's a great little pinup-type piece and I think it'd make a great cover, too. Does look like it needed a little more cleanup, though. :>

Mostly I think you just were unfortunate enough to end up with some crazy competition. Bombshell is the only one I've voted on so far where I ended up being able to pick my favorite based on who was more clever, rather than on who least messed up my personal criteria.

Jeysie wrote:I suppose that's an artifact of most of the voters being artists.

I'd guess most of the voters are not artists. The voting is open to anyone registered to the board. Which is good. Anyone could enter, so anyone should be able to vote.

I think that's why each thread began with some clear voting guidelines. To help voters focus on the purpose of the contest, which is to vote for entries that followed the specific assignment rules to come up with a "ready for color" publishable piece of cover art.

timshinn73 wrote:I'd guess most of the voters are not artists. The voting is open to anyone registered to the board. Which is good. Anyone could enter, so anyone should be able to vote.

I think that's why each thread began with some clear voting guidelines. To help voters focus on the purpose of the contest, which is to vote for entries that followed the specific assignment rules to come up with a "ready for color" publishable piece of cover art.

Well, it does seem like most of the *commenters* are artists, at least. I'm the one of the few whose comments I see so far more nitpicking the compositions instead of focusing mainly (or entirely) on the art technique, because I don't know enough to critique art style. (Plus I personally place more importance on what a piece of art *says*, admittedly).

But in any case, I agree with First Gen. I've seen a few well-drawn entries I passed on because I didn't think they followed the rules in one way or another, or didn't think was a good Spotlight cover, but they're still getting a lot of votes. *shrug*

Of course, based on people's comments on Mosaics and elsewhere, I knew my tastes in art were not the norm. So I'm kind of surprised when my own personal favorites *do* match the current winner.

Sorry to double post, but, gah. Just looked at the Misfire gallery, and I'm so disappointed that the two currently winning covers might be great in a technical sense, but they completely fail at depicting the character's personality. Well, I shall just have to redouble my composition-commenting efforts. *delves back into the voting*