32nd CG Boost Art Challenge for 3D Artists - Improve your 3D Skills!
The challenge ends on Wednesday, November 24th, 2021, at 16:00 CET!
The winners will be announced one week later on December 1st, 2021.
For our 32nd challenge, we received 230 submissions with all sorts of tiny worlds captured in bottles.
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.
We’re congratulating Clayton Sjoerdsma for winning the first place!
Follow Clayton:
ArtStation
“As soon as I saw the theme for this challenge, I knew I wanted to be a part of it!
So for this render, I wanted to bring the viewer into a lab of multiple micro biomes contained in bottles. Each bottle being fed by a network of water lines and wires to power the UV lights. Each individual world is carefully monitored and documented to ensure that they flourish within their bottle.
As always I learned a lot, this was the first project that I dove into geometry nodes and I was very impressed with the results.
This project took me roughly 20 hours from the early concept stages to the final render. As always I used Blender for modelling and also for texturing, Cycles for rendering. And Photoshop for color editing and post-processing."
Created using Blender and Photoshop.
Darko Vucenik: “So much detail in this image. Plants and mushrooms look nice and lively. Dispersion on the glass is a nice touch. Little pools of light guide viewers attention across the scene very effectively.”
Martin Klekner: “I love everything about this piece: the details, the shaders (especially the glass), the colors and composition, and the hint of a story it gives me. Rendered with a higher resolution and with less post-production sharpen effect, it would be perfect!”
Masha Bazueva: “Absolutely great work! The lighting, the composition and the materials are perfectly done. I love this kind of scenes with so much details to discover! Just one thing I would change is adding more variation to the mushrooms or turn some of them differently, since right now we can see that they are copies of the same model. Anyway, great work! Well done!”
Gregory Smith: “The striking lighting and detail makes this entry stand out for me. It meets the topic well with a clearly-communicated narrative.”
Ewa Wierbik: “I like how the Artist went a step further and created many variants of life in the bottle. It’s a quite nice idea. Composition is nice, only one small thing that bothers me is too much sharpening on the post-processing. Other than that, it looks nice.”
Aidy Burrows: “Quite a simple layout but very nicely done with subtle changes that really help what normally could be a very flat composition. However, here there’s great use of layout e.g. offsetting the heights of the shelving, great use of lighting and contrast to bring the eye into the pop of color to create a fantastic image.”
Cedric Van der Kelen: “Cool camera position and color use. The positions of the plants seem a bit random. I like the hints of a spider are nice, but it would’ve been cool to integrate it a bit more. Well done!”
Ken Liang: “Great colors and composition in this render. The vibrancy of the specimens inside those jars really bring out the contrast of the image. Although the scene is not too complex in modeling details, it’s the materials and lighting that really shines in this artwork.”
We’re congratulating Silvio von Büren for winning the second place!
“My Idea was, to create a Sanctuary in a post-apocalyptic world.
It took me around 50 hours to complete this artwork. I learned a lot about the volumetric Fog Volume in Octane, it was the first time I used it.“
Created using Cinema 4D, Octane Render and Photoshop.
Darko Vucenik: “I guess once the earth is totally messed up, elites can retreat in their bottle oasis. Great level of detail. Nice composition and storytelling. The brown, polluted sky is in nice contrast to the greenery in the bottle. Very nice character design.”
Marius Iatan: “An interesting take on the contest theme, placed in a strange, post-apocalyptic world. Very good level of detail, from the character’s equipment to the bottle supporting legs. Nice work!”
Ewa Wierbik: “I like this artwork for different approach. It looks aesthetically pleasing, colors and perspective are quite nice, but I have a feeling that this picture could have been cropped a little bit differently to emphasize the topic of the challenge. Other than that, it’s a very nice artwork.”
Aidy Burrows: “I really like the epic scale of this piece. The story, effort and detail that has gone into it is clear to see.”
Cedric Van der Kelen: “This barely made it to first place for me. Though the lighting, shading and composition are there, I would’ve liked a bit more edge added to really stick it out. The house inside is a bit on the bland side and could’ve really upped this piece to the next level. Great job!”
Ken Liang: “I’ve seen many similar renders of ‘a person overlooking the horizon from the top of a cliff’ but this one gets it right. Nicely thought out composition (top half vs bottom half) and good use of light to direct the focal point to the world in the bottle, then leading to the secondary focal point with the lantern at the bottom left.”
We’re congratulating Melina Matting for receiving the third place!
“How are these tiny worlds made? Who makes them and where?
This scene was inspired by my dads workshop where all his ideas come to life and took me several days to complete.“
Created using Blender (Cycles) and Affinity Photo.
Martin Klekner: “This artwork is really pleasing to the eye, everything from the composition, to the colors and color accents. I really dislike the lens flare effect, however, but that may be just my prejudice against lens flares 😀 There are some areas where a bit more normal or displacement detail would be great (the left table, the radiator controller, the top lamp) but those are minor drawbacks on an otherwise wonderful piece.”
Gregory Smith: “There’s an engaging narrative built into this shot that makes it something to spend a lot of time looking at. The subtle lighting is also really appealing.”
Ken Liang: “Really appreciate all the details that has been put into this render. The whole render is presented very clearly with good lighting, but perhaps it lacks a focal point. At first glance it is really hard to make out what to look at first, and it seems to be the wooden box with 6 drawers underneath the lamp instead of the bottle nearest to it. It is also hard to make out what it is inside the bottle without looking very hard.”
Masha Bazueva: “Such a lovely scene! I love all the containers with tiny worlds around the room. The lighting and the composition are very well done. Also, all the small elements leaved everywhere make it feel so natural, really like someone was just working there right now and left for a moment! Great work!”
We’re congratulating Uriel del Carmen for receiving an honorable mention!
Follow Uriel
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“Swamp in a bottle. The main idea was to create a small abandoned cabin in a swamp. The aesthetic of the image was inspired by still life art.“
Created using Blender and Affinity photo.
Martin Klekner: “Great simplicity of the scene is combined with a great amount of detail in the bottle. Amazing glass shader, I really like the condensed water effect. I would probably add a bit more detail onto the wall in the background, but otherwise an amazing job.”
Ewa Wierbik: “Simple, nearly in the still life painting style, but very well executed. Colors are very calming. Some of the dust on the main bottle could be less uniform, but I can imagine it being there for a very long time. Less is definitely more here, I like it!”
Cedric Van der Kelen: “This barely made it to first place for me. Though the lighting, shading and composition are there, I would’ve liked a bit more edge added to really stick it out. The house inside is a bit on the bland side and could’ve really upped this piece to the next level. Great job!”
Masha Bazueva: “Great work! I love the shape of the bottle, the glass material and the natural look of the vegetation inside the bottle! The composition, the lighting and the colors are great. I think that just some more details, like maybe some elements on the wall or some life inside the bottle, would make this image look even better. Anyway, it already looks amazing!”
We’re congratulating Daria Yudina for receiving an honorable mention!
Follow Daria:
ArtStation
“I get interested to do small recursion work, because recursion is a completely amazing thing. And here is an idea: ship in the bottle that drops the anchor near the bottle with the ship.
First of all I made a rough concept with Procreate. Next I built the scene to verify that I’m able to make an underwater environment in Blender using basic shapes, lightning and volumetric. Third step was modeling the main objects and arrange them in a correct way. Then I filled the bottle with water, ship and small anchor and add different objects like rocks and seaweed. Last step was ato dd colors to the scene, add small sand particles and render, render, render…“
Created using Blender (Cycles).
Gregory Smith: “I like the murky atmosphere in this scene that gives the environment a good sense of place. It’s a nice narrative touch to link the worlds inside and outside the bottle.”
Ozana Nemčanin: “Infinity loop! Sooo cool idea, very original work. Love the details and the mood! The light setup is superb. Simply put, this is great work :)”
Masha Bazueva: “I liked this work since I saw it on our community! Love the colors, the details and the fact that we can see the same scene in a small version inside the bottle! Well done!”
