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An entry, but may be too little, too late... Untitled...

A sandy strand runs the island round,
Delimiter of land and of sea, of life and of death.
Beyond the reef, now just a speck, the wreck,
A wood ship battered on a coral shore.
How long? Weeks, months, years?
Unknown.
He lost the count, and most of his mind,
When her body washed ashore.
So here he stands,
Memoriam to a memory
Of one so dear, so missed, so loved…
Had she survived, this could have been
A paradise found, removed from
The demands of surviving in the modern world.
There was enough here to live a life,
Water, food, the base necessities.
Their life, their love, their world,
Would have been each in the other,
Could have been each in the other,
On this sandy strand, that runs the island round.
This paradise.
Alone.
This hell.

Kastchey's response was pretty clever! I'm concluding the ECG on the field of battle, near the fallen warrior, is his shield. And all of the embryo images I found on the web had a dark colored eye, so it works in a number of ways to actually complete my image.
     I submit another opposite to "space" might be non-space, or hyper space, or a star gate, which has me exercising MSPaint at the moment. I'm trying for a suitable animation to fill that obnoxious hole.

Edit: What the heck... My response:

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/starGate_zps11e508f0.gif[/imgzoom]

I flipped Kastchey's star field, and came up with the entrance to non-space, a star gate near Earth. If I'd been as clever as Kastchey, I'd have figured out a way to emphasize the outline of the yin-yang image. It's there, but it's lost in the darkness of space.

Miguel commented that "the back view looks like he's in a rush." I had the same sense. I think it has something to do with the space between the legs in the back view. We don't see it in the front view. I was also wondering about the head looking off to the left in the side view. Looks okay to me, otherwise.

I've been playing with the idea of doing something in Mayberry, as in The Andy Griffith show. I'm not happy with this, and I'm no place close to being finished, but you can C&C if you care to do so.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/floydsNight_zps33c40297.gif[/imgzoom]

I note a considerable drop in quality in my night images. A similar daylight scene looks fine, but this is looking striated, almost dithered. Is this normal for low light gifs? It looks okay in Bryce and in the images I used to create the gif file.

Edit: I stuck my "Barney" into a default game. Here's a screen capture. Thought it might help explain the issue, to a degree.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/mayBarneypng_zps34f9b9ae.png[/imgzoom]

Barney is also open to comments, if you want. I have a scale issue which seems to be eluding me.

Complex challenge. I came up with this:

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/birth2_zps0cea7627.gif[/imgzoom]

The applicable word is "birth," with the opposite being, I guess, "death." I found a use for a few of the "red pixels" as the umbilical cord. Hope that's okay? Animating it seemed appropriate, in this case.

Awarding a bunch of Silvers would, incidentally, elevate Cerno, who now wears bifocals because of all the pixel counting he did during the course of the contest (and if my vote tally is correct), into a Bronze. Seems not voting is a good thing to do... Or not do? Now, I'm getting confused.

A non-entry. Submitted for no good reason, other than to keep it from taking up space on my hard drive, this was something else I saw in the shape:

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/JwW6sLTBuck2_zps76c5fd39.png[/imgzoom]

A meeting of the minds, coexistantly speaking. Again, this is not an entry.

How about a hippy snowflake?

I thought all of these were great. In the end, it was Selmiak that left me with that "wow!" feeling.

Mr. Baron, that tutorial proved very useful, or so it seems to me. I now have three faces for my character.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/sedStagesPng_zps75a0f3c8.png[/imgzoom]

I need to work some more on middle guy's nose, and I'm still open to suggestions about improving him/them.

Baron, thanks! That tutorial looks exactly like what I needed.

I had in mind something that involved an Anasazi male. I'll need to age the face, in three distinct stages: from youth, to adult, to aged. This is meant to fill the youth niche. Feel free to tell me how far I missed the mark. New at this, but fairly thick skinned.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/sedYoungpng_zps99f13555.png[/imgzoom]

Also, if anyone has seen a tutorial on aging a character, I'd appreciate your sharing it.

I also looked at Adrian's image in MSPaint, and I think, if not spot on, it comes very close. MSPaint wouldn't rotate it to that precise angle either. I submit that the image would probably look okay with the head at the angle of a normal rotation, so I think it ought to be allowed. It probably looks better at the angle Adrian chose, but forcing an individual, pixel by pixel, duplication of the outline would create a lot of additional work (and also introduce a distinct possibility of unnoticed errors and eye strain). I confess that I rely on MSPaint to "correctly" rotate and flip the outline, and I don't usually pay all that much attention to how accurately it does the job.

Anian has far more expertise, here, but I agree with Anian. It also looks off to me.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/addAnian_zps316575be.png[/imgzoom]

We seem to be looking directly at the building. The image centers, mostly, on the door. Extending Anian's lines, the "vanishing point" is to the right of the door. Moving the vanishing point towards the center of the picture would, probably, eliminate the oddity. It seems these grass lines are the dominant perspective clue in the image. I guess you might also draw some lines off the steps, but that might just confuse the issue even more in view of where they might meet. The stairs look okay, to me eyes

A truce in the Battle of the Sexes.

I "pictured" this almost immediately, tried some other things, but kept coming back to this idea.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/colorBallKiss1_zpsbf9755cb.png[/imgzoom]

I could have used a few more pixels on the gal's arm, but that's all Kasander gave me. I did try additional shading, but nothing I was able to do seemed to make it a better image, so I called it "done."

Edit: Darn it! I think I just made the same mistake here that I made last month. My image doesn't really fit within the shape. Sorry, folks.

I was mainly interested in the lighting and spark shower. Regarding how it looks in Bryce, it looks much the same, other than what the gif construction kit did to the colors. Your analogy about the neon llights is spot on. The original image I based this on was a black and white photo, a night shot, and the spark trails were distorted by a long exposure. I wanted to make it more realistic, but didn't think I could do it in Bryce without a substantial amout of tinkering. In the end, I began wondering what AGS could do for me. I've kind of run into a dead end regarding the particle system I was trying, since I'm getting a number of errors when I try to run the program. I'm working on it, but probably need to get more familiar with AGS scripting. I'm guessing my question is, basically, too broad. I do appreciate you taking the time to respond!

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/lunch1_zps1e23bb47.gif[/imgzoom]

In a prior incarnation, the Reverand Vest only slightly misunderstood the local natives' invitation to have dinner with them. The scene will require assorted individuals to keep the main course in the pot. The ethnicity of the natives, I leave up to the artists, since it will take a better mind than mine to avoid offending somebody. As a side note, I was seriously tempted to put Ponch's avatar in the pot, but I resisted the temptation, since I'm new at all this stuff.

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/testPonch_zpsfa7136f1.gif[/imgzoom]

Edit: Overnight I came up with a nonoffensive ethnic group to dance around the fire: the Pygmy Moo Moo natives of the Dark Cowtinent. I also thought about something along the lines of Kang and Kodos, of The Simpsons, but offending Ponch seemed like more fun. Now, off to study Ponch's avatar before he changes it...

Edit: Added imgzoom tags.

I'm Noob enough that I'm not sure this is the place for the posting, so an apology in advance if the moderators have to move it. That said, I had a desire to try the current Background Blitz. I may not actually enter, since I'm not at all happy with what I currently have. I'm not an artist, but I've been able to do some things with sPatch and Bryce that have kept me entertained. Here's the image:



I need to rethink my process as it relates to using AGS. I could smooth out my animation by adding frames. I could toy with the spark shower, and, perhaps, make it more realistic looking. In the end, I might come up with something for a cut scene, but not something that could stand as a background, since too much relies on Bryce. The most constructive critiscm might be a nudge in the direction of plugins and modules that would let the AGS Engine handle much of this. I've already found a Forum link to a particle system tutorial that seems well enough done that even I might be able to start using it for the spark shower. I'm going to start playing with it. I need to do some searches related to lighting via AGS also. I'd really appreicate comments about the process you folks might use, here. And if anyone has something to say about the image, I'd welcome that, too. Now, to see what the Moderators do with this post...

Does look good. I recently downloaded Baron's Winter Rose and was much impressed with the footprints left behind in the snow. These Epiphany images are static shots, so it's hard to tell if Rosa is leaving tracks behind. Joey, obviously, wouldn't.

My vote goes to Adam H. I could have looked at the shape from now until the end of time and never seen what he pulled out of it. Enjoyed the others, too.