Graphic/Web Designer by day...Illustrator by night. Graduated from Columbia College with a Bachelors in Interactive Multimedia.
All I can say is WOW!! 97 entries this month. The most ever for a contest. Here is the link to enjoy them all http://cshellmedia.com/clients/svs/
@Lee-White are you going to do a crit on all 97 LOL you better get a lot of water cause you are going to lose your voice for sure.
A lot of great pieces. It really shows that taken it slow will produce some great work!
After I cleaned up a few of the images that were duplicates the final total I had was 108 submissions. That is pretty impressive. So many great pieces. Here is the slide show for you all to enjoy:
Another tough one this month. This time its coming from @Jake-Parker
Design a book cover for the Wizard of Oz:
You have been contacted by an art director and they are wanting YOU to design a new cover of an edition of The Wizard of OZ that they will be publishing.
You must make it eye catching and representative of the story. You have creative freedom in style, character design, scenery, and moment.
The cover must be 5.4 inches wide x 8 inches tall with a .25 inch bleed.
Included is a template that you can use to create on. Feel free to use the title design on the template. Or you can come up with your own title design if you want.
That's it, good luck! Excited to see where you all take this!
Here are some more details:
The contest is open to anyone. But the winners and runners up will only be selected from active SVS members.
Post only finished pieces here. Post WIP projects in their own thread.
Put your real name and forum name on the image somewhere (can be on a border if you like).
Click the link to download the template. If you have any issues trying to download this template you can email me at cvalecek@gmail.com and I will send you the template.
Ever since I started working digital, I never really used the tools to try and mimic traditional media. Well this weekend I said I am going to learn. So using the 100 somethings challenge, I will do 100 paintings of horror icons. Here are my first 4.
I will be helping out with getting the topics posted each month for @Lee-White. No worries he is still running the contests and is the judge for them. I will still continue to create the slideshows each month and I will help getting the topic posted at the first of the month.
So with that being said, here it is. This months topic "Fall". Its that time of year so lets get into the mood of fall. Lets see what you all can come up with.
As always, create your own thread for WIPs and post your final image here. Don't forget to add your name and SVS username to the image to make it easier to tell who its from.
You guys out did yourselves again! 120 submissions. That broke that last record of 111 submissions. Could it have been because we were all isolated for the month? 
Here is the slideshow for you to enjoy: http://cshellmedia.com/clients/svs/
Here is my submission for this month. A different take on the Piped Piper.
Here is my submission, you know the saying Never trust a fish by it's tail.
This one is from @Will-Terry.
Assignment: Create one illustration to represent the following story:
Bongo the monkey woke up in the jungle to the sounds of birds cawing and the bright sun shining. He yawned and smiled and felt the hunger in his tummy, which was a bigger hunger than normal, so he climbed down his tree in search of breakfast. He passed the pineapples and thought, "tasty, but I'm tired of pineapple!". He came to the papaya tree and thought "tasty, but I'm tired of papaya." He passed the banana tree but thought, "cliche?...as if I'm going to be caught eating a banana!"
What he really wanted was a big juicy orange but all the orange trees were on the other side of the alligator infested river!
As he was walking and deciding what to eat he saw Clyde the Alligator floating on the far side of the river looking for his breakfast too! Bongo was so hungry but he couldn't resist teasing Clyde again, so he climbed the tree closest to Clyde. He crawled out on a branch overhanging the river and dangled his tail. Clyde's eyes looked up at the tail dangling just out of his reach, licked his lips, and slowly swam under the naughty monkey. Bongo wiggled his tail and dangled it lower and Clyde's eyes opened up more. Bongo kept lowering his tail more and more as Clyde raised his head out of the water.
Finally with one big surge Clyde exploded out of the water and gulped down Bongo whole and splashed back down into the river! Clyde got his breakfast!
But: Bongo was a particularly smart monkey so he waited for Clyde to swim back across the river. Then he started tickling Clyde's belly from the inside. Clyde did everything he could to hold in his giggles but finally he couldn't take it anymore and busted out laughing -and out popped Bongo!
Quickly Bongo climbed up into the jungle trees and found the biggest and juiciest orange to start his day off right. Now he just had to figure out how to get back!
The end.
There are multiple parts of the story that you could choose to illustrate but since you can only create one illustration this is an exercise in what to leave OUT! You cannot create an illustration that encapsulates the entire story because it happens over time. Illustrators need to develop the storytelling skills to discern between the very important, important, less important, and not important parts of the stories they illustrate.
Often you will see short stories in children's magazines and textbooks with one illustration that enhances the story be does NOT fully illustrate the entire story.
Can't wait to see what you come up with!
Here are some more details:
The contest is open to anyone. But the winners and runners up will only be selected from active SVS members.
Post only finished pieces here. Post WIP projects in their own thread.
Put your real name and forum name on the image somewhere (can be on a border if you like).
Good luck everyone!
@Kevin-Longueil I personally like bottom row first one. If i was in a book store and all of these were on display that is the first one to pop out to me.
@Nyrryl-Cadiz I didn't know it was a musical! Love the movie!!
Another tough one this month. This time its coming from @Jake-Parker
Design a book cover for the Wizard of Oz:
You have been contacted by an art director and they are wanting YOU to design a new cover of an edition of The Wizard of OZ that they will be publishing.
You must make it eye catching and representative of the story. You have creative freedom in style, character design, scenery, and moment.
The cover must be 5.4 inches wide x 8 inches tall with a .25 inch bleed.
Included is a template that you can use to create on. Feel free to use the title design on the template. Or you can come up with your own title design if you want.
That's it, good luck! Excited to see where you all take this!
Here are some more details:
The contest is open to anyone. But the winners and runners up will only be selected from active SVS members.
Post only finished pieces here. Post WIP projects in their own thread.
Put your real name and forum name on the image somewhere (can be on a border if you like).
Click the link to download the template. If you have any issues trying to download this template you can email me at cvalecek@gmail.com and I will send you the template.
Close to breaking the record for submissions. A lot of great ideas on how to handle this prompt. Great work everyone!
This month has gotten away from me, but here are the rest of the steps I took to get to the final I submitted.
Getting it in under the wire here. Lost track of time or should I say days since its been just one long day since March LOL. So many great submissions, I wonder if the record has been broken by the amount of submissions this month? I will find out tomorrow when I pull them all for the slide show. Anyway here is my submission.
@Kevin-Longueil looks great. I would add a little detail to the leaves since some have lines and some don't.
@PieterVanDerBeek great idea, If you are only looking to do one illustration on this one I would go with the second set number 2. But I think this concept would look great if it was a two page spread with the left page being Bongo with this calculation and then the right page would be where he is using his tail as a hotdog.
I made some more adjustments and added a few more characters into the piece. I also started to put in some shadows and highlights on the characters. All the fun stuff before the clean up begins.
