After a long delay, here are the results of the event:
Reviews:
anarchianbedlam
eubz
Not approved
It's a tree with HIVE plastered on it, it looks awful and has nothing to do with the hive, it is the absolute bare minimum amount of effort that could have possibly been put into an entry like this.
PROXY
Approved
The idea is clever, Ralle, the santa moose. But the texture wrap is awful; stripey horns, flat red suit, smudgy head shaped like a foot. But again, the concept of it fits the hive, and the 'christmas' theme very well. I like the ban-hammer and the animations fit the model well. A cross between the peasant and ogre animations, good choice.
Revilo
Approved
Fairly simple but it's an interesting idea. You did not need a custom texture for this. But otherwise the mesh and particles look nice enough. The model fits the hive and the christmas theme rather well.
Hawkwing
Not approved
I dont really see much thought put into this. It looks like you were working on a skin and then just decided to submit it to this contest offhand. It's like... a robo-skeleton-mage with a leaf cape? The only slight connection with the hive are the tiny H letters on his chin and chest, but the H isnt even in our unique/recognizable font, its could be an H for anything. The colors are bleh and it has no connection to 'christmas' or the winter season in general.
M0rbid
tobyfat50
Approved
Creativity: Let me get that straight: The Terrain is not really creative, I can tell of thousands of christmas images, movies and presents of all sorts displaying a peaceful romantic village in the snow during christmas night. Variation: Santa flying in front of the moon with his sledge. Oh, you missed that. :P That's about the creativity part. I will admit, that I doubt you aimed for a creative take anyways and hence the terrain fullfills its job here. The Hive as a peaceful, snowy village with a romantic notch. That is to put it simple. Okay.
Detail: The detail level clearly meets what is needed and I can sum it up, except from a very very few very very small parts you met a perfect level of detail, adding a good realism feel without making the whole piece look messy. Only a few parts could have used a very bit more love. For example the garden of the houses to the very right. It looks rather empty, even for a winter garden.
That's for this. Good job over all here.
Technique: The doodad choice is definatelly up to the job. Props for this. The transition fog - sky is extremely lacking though and is a major downgrade of the overall terrain. You should go through fladdermaskens beautiful fog tutorial and adapt his ideas. Basically the contrast between the purple hills and the brownish black sky is not smooth enough. The hill/mountain lines lack a lot of depth there aswell, as there basically seems to be one row of them only. Apart from those flaws, the technique is good. Mainly the structure of the village is well nailed and gives it a nice romantic feeling.
Aesthetic/résumé: What can I say? Those motives are used during christmas so they certainly look quite good and do their job. However the sky - fog thing could use improvement. And that is what you should mostly take from this review.
Pharaoh_
mckill2009
Not approved
Aesthetically, the effect should be produced a lot faster. I like how you managed to merge the Warcraft III universe with the whole Hive idea, but it had almost nothing to do with Christmas ("almost" because of the fireworks). The animations of the buildings were quite random, to be honest, you could use other models and display victory ones.
I'd also like it more if you used a smarter approach to the idea, given that coding can turn something into cinematic; example would be a user logging into Hive: what does he see/how does he react? Hive with constant fireworks doesn't really exude what Hive means to you.
Apheraz Lucent
Not approved
The whole execution was somewhat good in some places, but at the same time, the rhyme didn't go well in most of them, which didn't turn the structure of the poem really enjoyable. I also liked how you combined Hive, but it was more of an observation of the activity here (ie who does what) and not a personal interpretation of Hive. You also focused so much on Hive's certain members (you could stick to an abstract reference), that I didn't get the christmas feeling a lot. It was mostly a script of actions, not a product of real imagery.
I may be gone, but will never be forgotten. I may fall down, but will always rise. I may not be strong, but... I just want you to remember me as you did. A girl with a smile on her face, and a grin in her soul.
Arena Christmas Event ~ The results!
