Now Live
Ended
Winners Announced
April 2019

Ancient Robot Challenge

2nd CG Boost Art Challenge for 3D Artists - Improve your 3D Skills!

180
Submissions received
00
Days
00
Hrs
00
Min
00
Sec
Overview

Ancient Robot Challenge winners announced!

Wow, our 2nd challenge at CG Boost was crushing all previous records! We had smashing 180 accepted submissions!

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.

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.
Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again.
Jury

Get to know our jury.

No items found.

Get feedback and improve faster with our community.

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.

No items found.
Winners: Pro Arena
Winners

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

Let’s see who has won this challenge.

Finalists

No items found.

Winners

1st Place

Mehdi Cherifi

We’re congratulating Mehdi Cherifi for winning the first place!

Follow Mehdi:
Facebook

Mehdi about his entry:

“This was my 2nd full 3d scene out the archviz field, so my main concern was to deliver the story with a single shot. I started with the robot as it’s the main subject in the scene, then I spent hours gathering references and read articles about storytelling, environments and color theories. The final concept was inspired by one of my favorite games released last year “God of war”, so I landed on the idea of a human vs gigantic robot, I played around with the composition between the two in different scenarios then completed the environment as a character in the scene not just a background. I’m grateful that I had the chance to participate in this challenge with a great, supportive community, thank you all.”

Created using 3ds Max, Substance Painter, Quixel Mixer, Unreal Engine 4 and Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Zacharias Reinhardt: “You really feel the size of this dangerous robot in this image. There might be maybe a bit too many elements in the scene, but the great composition, excellent technical execution and the perfect use of effects, color and light, makes this a winning entry for me.”

Chris Plush: “Amazing attention to detail in both the characters and the environment. I’d love to see how this battle plays out.”

Aidy Burrows: “Great epic feel to this and a very nice touch adding all that extra water spray for the sense that the robot is moving towards the characters in the boat. And interesting storytelling with the hunters in the boat perhaps after the deer that seem at ease to have this robot on their side. Great stuff!”

Serhii Antropov: “Excellent work, perfect clean render, atmospheric environment, cool lighting, and great robot design.”

Chipp Walters: “This wonderful render is visually rich with particular attention paid to color tone, depth of field and composition. Daytime scenes, like this one, are typically harder to setup because the lighting tends to show every detail and defect. This scene expertly displays details and designs using a very low camera angle and wide field of view. My only concern is the bowman pose. I understand the use of the bow provides the requisite ancient aspect and overall scale, but overall I really don’t know what he’s feeling or how he contributes to the scene. Still, the strong composition and attention to detail provides a rich viewing experience.”

Lukas Walzer: A very dramatic and cinematic composition with a crazy amount of nice details make this a very atmospheric fantasy piece!

Cedric Van der Kelen: “Brilliant execution on both main subject and set. The piece is explorable and compositing in shape and color is very nicely done. Nice robot design.”

Julien Kaspar: “There are many ways this artwork stands out for me. Atmosphere, composition, lighting, storytelling all are really well done and leave enough to keep looking for more.”

2nd Place

Alfons Svensson

We’re congratulating Alfons Svensson for winning the second place!

Follow Alfons:
Artstation

Instagram

Alfons about his entry:

“When I saw the theme of this challenge I got very interested. I’ve wanted to create a robot-scene for a long time, and i also wanted to practice my environment-skills. Therefore, I felt like this contest was something I wanted to participate in.

I started to figure out an interesting scenario where an adventurer found an enormous, old, ancient robot. I painted some quick concepts in Photoshop and some shapes in Zbrush. After a little while I came up with an idea for a scene that I wanted to create.

When designing the robot, I tried to keep the “Ancient” feeling as strong in mind as possible. In the robot you can find some shapes and lines that’s similar to old roman helmets, and the horn and general silhouette of the robot is inspired by dinosaurs. I modeled the robot and the rest of the scene in Blender 2.8. I painted the textures for the robot in Substance Painter. For the rocks and cliffs I created some procedural materials inside Blender.

I wanted the viewer to feel like this robot has existed for a very long time. Therefore, I covered him in moss, trees and other vegetation to emphasize on this even more. You can see rocks and dust falling from him, as he rises up to inspect the explorer that just disturbed this Ancient mechanical beings’ rest.

I modeled all the rocks, trees and vegetation myself, except the Ivy-branches, they were created using IvyGen.

During this project, that lasted for about 1,5 weeks, I studied composition a lot. I learned a lot about how to arrange your scene and how to guide the viewers eye. For example: The cliff that the adventurer is standing on, is pointing towards the robot. The horn is also directing towards the eyes of the robot. You can also see the rule of thirds being applied since the eyes of the robot and the adventurer are in “opposite corners of the thirds.”

After lighting, shading and rendering in Cycles, I composited the passes and post-processed the image inside of Photoshop.

I’ve really enjoyed creating this scene, and I loved the theme. I learned a lot, like you tend to do when competing in these challenges.

Thanks for hosting regular challenges like these. It helps a lot of people, including me, to develop their artistic skills further.”

Created using Blender, Substance Painter and Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Chris Plush: “Great design, composition, and sense of scale here. Leaves you wondering what quest this giant was summoned for.”

Aidy Burrows: “The interpretation of the theme to have giant robots seems quite strong, and here it is done very well using the human figure as scale.“

Wybren van Keulen: “This dynamic snapshot tells the story of an ancient giant awakening. The motion is what tells the story, which is really hard to accomplish in a still image! Hats off… Great attention to lighting and texturing make this a truly finished piece of art.”

Marius Iatan: “Expressive scene that needs to tell its story. Nicely set against the sunset background, good level of detail and proper use of camera focus.”

Zacharias Reinhardt: “I really like the feel of an old robot that is covered in plants. I don’t get dangerous vibes from the robot, so it feels like a friendly giant. I especially like the great use of colors and the composition.”

3rd Place

Wilalbert Gomez

We’re congratulating Wilalbert Gomez for winning the thrid place!

Follow Wilalbert:
Artstation

Website

Wilalbert about his entry:

“This entry is inspired in the dawn of the human race, where cavemen fight against the earth to survive, and then, a robot seems to appear from nowhere walking like a tourist on a happy trip. The proof that robots exist before humankind.“

Created using 3ds Max and Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Aidy Burrows: “Great comic vibe on this one, and a good twist on the theme. A modern happy robot but in ancient times, or is perhaps some timeless prankster travelling between ancient periods and bringing together creatures that would otherwise be millions of years apart!”

Serhii Antropov: “Great story and humor plus amazing characters.”

Wybren van Keulen: “Unique style and fun – it puts a smile on my face every time I look at it. Extra marks for the attention to detail, consistency of style throughout the entire image, and for what is probably the most ancient robot in this competition!”

Honorable Mention

Flo Tasser

We’re congratulating Flo Tasser for receiving an honorable mention!

Follow Flo:
Artstation

Facebook

Flo about his entry:

“Ancient Robots got me thinking about the greek mythology. Zeus always fascinated me, so I wanted to make a big robot to fight for Zeus against the titans because even though he is strong and the father of gods, I always thought he’d need to be bigger to take on titans face to face.
A young adventurer went on a long journey to find this place of peace, rest and harmony, where the old, not any more needed robot has its final rest.”

Created using Blender and Photoshop.

Honorable Mention

Cheggour Hamza

We’re congratulating Cheggour Hamza for receiving an honorable mention!

Follow Cheggour:
Facebook

Cheggour about his entry:

“The story behind my concept, is that an ancient robot was discovered on an underground archeological site, and a temporary lab have been established on site to do some initial tests.

With this project I forced myself to work with Blender 2.8, EEVEE was of a great help to set up materials, and basic lighting, then switched to cycles for final render. The Principled shader was of a great help combined with Node wrangler for PBR textures. I’m not familiar with sculpting but thanks to the new UI of Blender 2.8, sculpting became so easy, for the broken pillars I used Blenders fracture modifier.

Blender 2.8 is a game changer !”

Created using Blender, Gimp and Rawtherapee.

Highlights: Training Arena

Let’s see how our newcomers have performed.

Raffle Winners

Learn who’s won our raffle.

Winners

The sponsors and supporters of this challenge.