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Winners Announced
December 2020

Snow Creature Challenge

21st CG Boost Art Challenge for 3D Artists - Improve your 3D Skills!

150
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Artwork by
Giorgio Grecu
Overview

Snow Creature Challenge winners announced!

For our 21st challenge, we received 150 submissions with many Snow Creatures, some are scary, some cute, but they are all great and unique.

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.

Artwork by
Giorgio Grecu
How to participate

First of all, choose your side.

Description
Prizes
Rules
Deliverables
Judging Criteria
Description
Prizes
Rules
Deliverables
Judging Criteria

Further questions? Find more info in our FAQ section.

Participate Now

Submit your work.

Select your arena *

Please submit the following two files:
1. A screenshot or clay render of your 3D scene
2. Your final render
Please use the following naming convention for your files:
Final Render: Your_Name_final (e. g. "Zach_Reinhardt_final.jpg")
Screenshot/Clay Render: Your_Name_wip (e. g. "Zach_Reinhardt_wip.jpg")

Thank you!

We will review your submission and then add it to our submission folder above. If your submission is invalid or missing something, you will be informed in a timely manner.
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Jury

Get to know our jury.

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Post your work-in-progress renders in our community and get constructive feedback from the CG Boost team and other members.

FaQ

Frequently asked questions.

Where do I ask questions about the challenge?
Can I update my entry after I submitted it already, if I notice a mistake?
Can I share my artwork online before the challenge is over?
When I win the challenge, can I get cash instead of the prizes?
Can I enter both categories at the same time?
Jury

Get to know our jury.

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Winners: Pro Arena
Winners

Let’s see who has won in the Pro Arena.

Let’s see who has won this challenge.

Finalists

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Winners

1st Place

Jesse Amiel Gayanilo

We’re congratulating Jesse Amiel Gayanilo for winning the first place!

Follow Jesse:
Artstation

Jesse about his entry:

“Just a simple scene of a snow fairy chilling.

At first, my idea was to create some sort of winter wolf in a forest, but after a while, I have a difficulty of making it before the time,then I decided to make a way smaller scene, a snow fairy on a frosty leaf, which is around 4 days before the deadline, so I have to make the scene simple, stylized, and keep only the essential stuff like gesture, form, value, and composition.I also didn’t have time to create the fairy in the usual way we create characters, so I sculpted the fairy already posed, retopo it in Instant Meshes, and then adding more stuff (the muscles, bony landmarks, etc) and tweaking back in Blender.

I learned a lot in this challenge, it gave me the opportunity to apply my recently acquired anatomy knowledge into 3D sculpting.“

Created using Blender 2.91 (EEVEE) and Instant Meshes.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Lukas Walzer: “Well, this is easily one of the best pieces I have ever seen in this challenge! The pose, thorough understanding of anatomy, composition and shapes just blows my mind!”

Cedric Van der Kelen: “very nice color use and composition. I would’ve liked to see more finesse in the white details. Nice work!”

Gregory Smith: “This is an excellent entry; the composition and colouring makes it stand out as a thumbnail, whilst the careful attention to detail across the scene gives life to the whole image.”

Darko Vucenik: “Very interesting interpretation of snow fairy. Great character design. I like the exaggerated muscle definition, icy color pallet and the overall pose. Frost on the leaf is done in an interesting way, simple but effective.”

Christoph Werner: “Great sculpting and presentation. Lovely lights and shading.”

Martin Klekner: “Wonderful creature design, great in its (seeming) simplicity. Really like the stylization, as well as the colors and the expressiveness of the pose. This one is definitely in my top 2 pieces from this competition, both from the artistic and the design standpoint.”

Juan Hernandez: “Amazing artwork. Lighting and composition work seamlessly, I really like the design of the creature and how appealing the result is. Everything is organic and very detailed. Definitely one of my favorite pieces of art.”

2nd Place

Jack Waller

We’re congratulating Jack Waller for winning the second place!

Follow Jack:
Artstation

Jack about his entry:

“A woolly rhino and her calf on a snowy day.

I was inspired by a photograph of a polar bear and its cub playing in the snow that I came across. I wanted to create a similar tender moment between a couple of creatures. I decided on woolly rhinos because they are something that could only be seen in an artwork (since they are extinct).

I hadn’t made a CG animal before (except for humans), so this project was quite a learning experience!
All the sculpting, texturing and rendering were done in Blender, with a bit of post-processing in Photoshop.“

Created using Blender 2.90 (Cycles) and Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Lukas Walzer: “The hair particles and textures may not be on point, but somehow this image looks incredibly realistic in the overall view. I really like the contrast of the documentary-style realism and the quirky fantastic anatomy!”

Cedric Van der Kelen: “very nice rendering and cute subject matter. The flat lightning works with the environment, but for me the readability of the child’s face falls away. Nice work!”

Marius Iatan: “I like the tranquility from this scene, the expressiveness of the creatures. Good level of detail, too!”

Wybren van Keulen: “So cute! So adorable! But apart from that you did a great job capturing a snowy atmosphere while still creating a warm image. Five points!”

Martin Klekner: “Absolutely love this duo of creatures. It captures wonderfully the heart-warming moment between these two woolly rhinos, one of my favorite prehistoric animals by the way. The artistic side in this piece supports the emotion it wants to evoke – and it succeeds flawlessly. My favorite piece of this competition.”

Ken Liang: “This is such an amazing creature! The motherly love really does come through in the render and I do feel the warmth even though the snow is so heavy. Great expressions on the creatures, and the hair is absolutely amazing + the snow on top of those fur is just, wow! Lovely!”

Juan Hernandez: “I like how this is different from most of the entries. The first thing that caught my eye was the organic colors of the skin (redness around the nose and overall variation), this really shows how these creatures could be real. Also, great job adding snow on top of the fur, that is quite hard to pull off. I like how at the end is a quite cute scene, nicely done!”

3rd Place

Ammer Daud

We’re congratulating Alexandru Rusu for receiving the third place!

Follow Alexandru:
Artstation

Alexandru about his entry:

“Among the most mysterious of all flying creatures, much of what is known about the Phoenix exists in often changing legends that have been told through generations. It has been constantly associated with fire, cleansing, and renewal. Yet, in this case, I tried to go for the opposite: a creature consumed by freezing flames, coming from a climate of unforgiving ice and bitter winds.

I created the model and ice texture entirely in Blender. I tried using Octane as a render engine to achieve interesting caustics. Still, I ended up switching to Cycles, as it provided better results (although at 10k samples and 10h render time). As a final step, I used the Compositor and Photoshop to make the image brighter and more vibrant.”

Created using Blender and Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Lukas Walzer: “Very simple in subject and lighting, but just beautiful in its subtle execution! The marvelous crystal material really makes this one shine!”

Gregory Smith: “Very striking, this render demonstrates superb technical execution with a creative design for the subject.”

Marius Iatan: “I’m not sure whether this is the real Snow Creature or just an ice sculpture of it, but it’s very well done. Nice work!”

Darko Vucenik: “This ice griffin looks truly majestic. Overall design of the creature is excellent, I especially love how the wings were done. Ice material is excellent and the blue light inside the creature’s chest gives it a touch of magic.”

Christoph Werner: “I love creating materials and know how hard it is to create a real looking ice shader or glass, sometimes. Impressive work, the model too!”

Martin Klekner: “I really like this clean, polished render, with wonderful glass-like ice shapes forming a mysterious ice creature. The cold blue heart in its core and the wonderful translucence of the material forms a very pleasing results for me.”

Honorable Mention

Jeffry Quiambao

We’re congratulating Jeffry Quiambao for receiving an honorable mention!

Follow Jeffry:
Artstation

Jeffry about his entry:

“For this project it took me about one week to finish (spending 5 hours a day because of my day job) and about 3 hours to render. Learned a couple of techniques using ornatrix hair and using sss shader in substance painter, and the idea behind my piece is just a yeti greeting all of us a merry Christmas.”

Created using 3DSMax, Vray and ornatrix.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Cedric Van der Kelen: “very cool rendering and storytelling. The only thing off is the balance and pose of the creature, although it brings a certain sense of mystique. Great work!”

Aidy Burrows: “great cold feel to this render, I really like the character design and the environment, plus the wrapping it up in Christmas is a nice touch.”

Darko Vucenik: “This image gives me that creepy clown feel despite yeti taking clown’s role. The Blue foggy atmosphere gives something that would otherwise look comical in warm happy colors a horror overtone. Great work on the creature and his accessories.”

Martin Klekner: “The best render of a cheery Christmas Yeti I’ve seen in this competition. Love the colors and how the red details give the artwork life. I’d maybe work a little bit more on the pose, so it’s more apparent what’s the creature’s aim. Still, I really dig the atmosphere, the colors and the Yeti itself.”

Ken Liang: “Great creature work with nice hair grooming all around. The lighting is a little flat around the belly part though, I’d suggest adding a soft fill light to illuminate the creature from below since snow reflects light too.”

Honorable Mention

Jazib Daud

We’re congratulating Jazib Daud for receiving an honorable mention!

Jazib about the entry:

“Humans fought with Gexns the snow creatures for years making them leave their homes, endangered their species. And she also had to leave… Now she is embarked on a journey to find out her remaining fellows around the continent…to gather enough force to fight back and take back what belongs to her.

I used ZBrush, Blender, Photoshop, and it took me around 8 days to get this done.

What I learned in this project is how to tackle time-consuming university projects with your cool personal projects…just kidding 😂

I actually learned how to make fur using Zbrush and Blender only…it was fun.”

Created using Zbrush, Blender, Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Cedric Van der Kelen: “the composition and storytelling are sublime! Nice focus on the main subject, lighting is great. The rendering of the fur on the face could use a tad more, maybe some whiskers? Nonetheless, great work!”

Marius Iatan: “A mesmerizing portrait, with very nice play of light and shadow, of focus and blur. Great job!”

Christoph Werner: “Very nice face expression. I like how the character is acting.”

Martin Klekner: “Wonderfully rendered creature, with a nice use of light and painterly techniques. I really like the creature’s design and the hint of story in this artwork. The composition is maybe not as polished as I’d like it to be, otherwise, great piece!”

Highlights: Training Arena

Let’s see how our newcomers have performed.

Raffle Winners

Learn who’s won our raffle.

Winners

  • Kuno Mainzer
  • Diego Villamizar
  • Riff Woods

The sponsors and supporters of this challenge.