14th CG Boost Art Challenge for 3D Artists - Improve your 3D Skills!
For our 14th challenge, we received 213 submissions, with so many creative, mysterious and beautiful libraries.
Our jury had a good but also hard time judging all the great accepted submissions. Each judge voted for their own top 5 artworks. We also picked three random winners for the challenge raffle, see all the winners below.
Regrading the prizes, we will contact the winners during the next few days.
Congrats to the winners and honorable mentions, and a big THANK YOU to our sponsor and everyone for taking part!
Now scroll down to see the winners.
We’re congratulating Krzysztof Fendryk for winning the first place!
Follow Krzysztof:
Artstation
“My inspiration came from visiting Trinity Library in Dublin (an iconic place) and re-watching Harry Potter movies with my daughter. I took part in the challenge to push myself out of my comfort zone and do an interior which i haven’t done in a long time. Story wise, I was looking to breath some motion and live to rather static appearance of the library, after good few iterations, different characters, different moods, I’ve settled up with the Monk, flying pages and yellow-blue tinted mood.
Biggest challenge for me was to create all of the assets within time given. I’ve made roughly 60 different books to avoid repetition. Technique wise, it’s a typical edge/box modeling, UV’s, textures painted in Painter, all rendered with V-ray with a sprinkle of volumetric fog on top. I’ve used Nuke to rebuild shaders and color correct the composition adding glow and vignette.“
Created using 3ds Max, Marvelous Designer, RizomUV, Substance Painter and Nuke.
Julien Kaspar: “The execution and presentation is really top-notch on every level with this artwork. Really a pleasure to look at!”
Chris Plush: “I love the composition of this, and it almost has a VR feel to it too thanks to the lens distortion and foreground elements, all helping give it more of a sense of realism.”
Chipp Walters: “An amazing piece with a high concept depicts a wizard alone in his study conjuring acts of magic. Beautiful attention is paid to the circular staircase, serious lighting, wonderful short lens perspective. Well done!”
Darko Vucenik: “A supernatural event in the library. I like the composition aided by the fish eye lens. Cold lighting is appropriately unsettling. The overall atmosphere of the image is great.”
Ken Liang: “This one made it into my top 5 because the overall execution is very clinical and professional. The fish eye lens distortion really lifts the whole image onto the next level, giving it a narrative as though this place is an imaginary library conjured in someone’s head, couple it with a mysterious figure in a hood, and you have a very surreal image. I can imagine how plain it would be without the effect which would make it look like another typical library image. Superb details in the materials as well.”
We’re congratulating Jeffry Quiambao for winning the second place!
Follow Jeffry:
Artstation
“Because of my love for post-apocalyptic art I decided to make a library close to my design genre. When I first started working on this library I was using VRay GPU to render the scene. Unfortunately, when the textures become so large I have to switch to CPU to handle the texture load. I have to sacrifice the render speed to handle this scene.
The final rendering took me about 9 hours to render, because of the fog, particles and motion blur in the scene.“
Created using 3ds Max, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, VRay, Marvelous Designer, Ornatrix and Forest Pack Pro.
Julien Kaspar: “I love how much detail went into this image on top of a solid basis. Some parts of the image seem a bit too noisy with details but it still works well.”
Lukas Walzer: “Ah, all those nice gritty little details and textures! There’re dozens of things to explore in this image and the lighting is fantastic!”
Chris Plush: “Really nicely put together, and a great eye for detail. There’s really no spot in this room that didn’t get some attention. I particularly like the vines growing in through the boarded window.”
Darko Vucenik: “This image would fit right in to the Harry Potter universe. A mysterious wizard and his house elf doing research in rather crummy looking library. Image is so full of detail, and I like the dirtiness of the textures. Nice atmospheric lighting.”
Joseph Nickson: “The attention to detail across the scene here is fantastic, although a crop in on the left side alone is to me a stronger image to give room to take in the detail provided.”
We’re congratulating Chris Byrnes for receiving the third place!
Follow Chris:
Artstation
“I wanted to create an environment that would feel familiar but setup in a unfamiliar way.
I usually start with simple blocking geometry and then set up a camera. I use a 6-foot man to get the scale right. I then break out all the assets into separate scenes and re-import once textured / shaded.
I tend to begin lighting early too, so I can get an idea of how the scene is looking. I use Redshift for rendering. It’s a fast GPU renderer making it easy to get feedback on shaders quickly.
I ended up splitting out the planet / ring and Library into different passes, so I could give it a final grade and add some effects.
The final result took about 9 days from concept to completion.“
Created using Maya, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Redshift and Nuke.
Lukas Walzer: “Perfect in nearly every aspect! Every corner of this magnificent image reveals a galactic amount of detail!”
Julien Kaspar: “I like the idea and especially the execution of the set. The only thing missing for me are clear points of interest for the eye through more interesting lighting.”
Cedric Van der Kelen: “The combination of Sci-fi and classical style is supreme in this piece! Nice job on the lighting and atmosphere of the piece. I want to see more of this space station. Well done!”
Aidy Burrows: “Cool take on the theme here! Fusing typically opposite ideas and architecture with the futuristic sci-fi elements and the old wood and tiles of the familiar library setup. It’s true that there is always a frame within a frame, whether that be a frame of context, or taking a library and placing it within the frame of some larger environment.”
We’re congratulating Vincent Goode for receiving an honorable mention!
Follow Vincent:
Instagram
“Being in Covid-19 lockdown has afforded me a lot of time to work on this entry. It is one of those “find” genre pictures and you can search for Freddy Frog, the wise owl, 10 bookworms, an origami dinosaur, a kid with hearing aids and even a magnifying glass. Oh, there is also a golden key to be found. The image is based on an original illustration by Elizabeth Goode.
This piece was done almost entirely in Blender 2.82a and rendered in Cycles at 6000 samples. A little of UV work was done in Photoshop. I modelled all the items myself. There sure were a lot of books! Thank you for the contest and stay safe!“
Created using Blender and Photoshop.
Gregory Smith: “I really like the diorama approach in this scene. It’s a shot that’s brought to life by the interesting characters and the subtle narrative details. While there’s a lot going on, it’s perfectly unified by the lighting and coloring.”
Darko Vucenik: “Simple, cute, clean design with very orthographic looking perspective make this piece look like something out of children storybook. A very interesting stylized approach.”
Ken Liang: “I was instantly charmed by this artwork when I saw it for the first time. The amount of details is astounding! There are so many things to look at, and I feel like Vincent is playing a game of ‘guess how many snakes are there’ with me. Love the children story book treatment. Personally, I would brighten up the ambient a bit more and add a few more fill lights to really make the elements pop up. By the way, I counted 11 snakes in total.”
Joseph Nickson: “I spent a good while looking around the scene and taking in the micro stories, everything from the hidden dog to the book holding frog & bookworms. Fantastic representation of a Library atmosphere.”
We’re congratulating Rob Buxton for receiving an honorable mention!
Follow Rob:
Website
“This is my ‘Library of the Stars’ where the knowledge of our vast universe is recorded. A library can be anything related to a collection of knowledge, and I’m a bit of a space nerd, so the combination of these two themes created a really interesting concept.
I wanted to challenge myself and learn Blender at the same time, this was the perfect opportunity for me. I was a little late to the party on this one only starting it a week ago but I have learned so much in this short period of time and I absolutely love the Blender workflow.“
Created using Blender.
Cedric Van der Kelen: “very well done! The detail and atmosphere are all present in a very colorful piece. The only thing I would add is more fog to make it more cinematic (the very dark blacks and bright highlights take away from the scale). Also, some more dirt could’ve made it more realistic, it looks a bit too “brand new”. Very well done!”
Chris Plush: “The sense of wonder for the universe is captured nicely in this shot, especially with the fantastic telescope design. Even the color scheme of it all somehow adds to a feeling of awe and fantasy surrounding the mysteries of the universe. 10/10, would read a book there.”
Chipp Walters: “They say color is the strongest design element, and this choice shows how careful attention to color tone can create an absolute stunning image. The figure ground composition is really nice with the breathable sky offering a nice relax point for the viewers eyes. The magnificent focal point of the scene– the telescope, is well modeled and has great detail. Overall a stunning image!”
