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Ended
Winners Announced
November 2020

Magic Book Challenge

20th CG Boost Art Challenge for 3D Artists - Improve your 3D Skills!

187
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Artwork by
Artem Priakhin
Overview

Magic Book Challenge winners announced!

For our 20th challenge, we received 187 submissions with many creative magic books of all kinds!

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.

Artwork by
Artem Priakhin
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.
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Jury

Get to know our jury.

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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.

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Winners: Pro Arena
Winners

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

Let’s see who has won this challenge.

Finalists

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Winners

1st Place

Ozana Nemčanin

We’re congratulating Ozana Nemčanin for winning the first place!

Follow Ozana
Artstation

Ozana about her entry:

“We just now witnessed an executed spell that went terribly wrong. Inexperienced witch that read this spell page only wanted to get herself a pet. One bat, even better plenty of bats. She did manage to get herself bats but also, hm something else was lurking around…

I’ve created this work completely in Blender using EEVEE. Affinity Photo was used to create textures, and also to enhance colors, color balance, and contrast. Smoke, dust, and spiderweb I did with planes in Blender, which had alpha texture (created in Affinity Photo).“

Created using Blender 3D and Affinity Photo.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Marius Iatan: “An image that definitely spells ‘magic’. I like the dynamism, the choice of colors and the overall feeling of the scene.”

Chris Plush: “Between the action of the scene, the effects used, and the demonic forces being unleashed, this piece was put together with a pretty tangible sense of chaos which was the best part. Everything is well-made too, particularly the book itself which has such a great amount of detail and grunge.”

Ebrahim Umar-Khitab: “Ozana gives us explosive energy and is able to capture a sense of dynamism in the scene with the effective use of light and color accents.”

Wybren van Keulen: “An explosion of visual interest, but you kept it clean with a subdued color scheme. Lots to see, lots to like!”

Darko Vucenik: “You can just fell the energy bursting out of this image. All the flying pages and smoke effect create a very dynamic feeling. A lot of nice detail everywhere and I especially like how the edges of pages were done looking old and tattered”

Ken Liang: “Very powerful image! I really like the effects that helped bring out the impact of the claw coming out of the book – the carefully placed pages that points to the center, the glow of the text on the book, the way the objects are positioned on the table, the smoke, and yes, the bats!”

2nd Place

Vladimír Stáňa

We’re congratulating Vladimír Stáňa for winning the second place!

Follow Vladimír
Artstation

Created using Blender, Zbrush, Substance Painter, Affinity Photo.

Wip Render

What our jury says:

Lukas Walzer: “Some solid shading and lighting going on here. Colors and materials are working great together to create this dark gothic mood.”

Gregory Smith: “A great entry; it meets the topic perfectly in an inventive way, provides an engaging narrative, and is very well executed technically.”

Darko Vucenik: “I like this “call of Cthulhu” inspired piece. I like the overall mood of the piece, with dim ligating and mist. The book as a portal for monsters is truly a horror classic.”

Martin Klekner: “Very dark and mysterious artwork, with great modeling, sculpting, as well as composition and lighting. I like the symbolism of the piece. The little character maybe lacks a detail or two for me to be completely happy… Other than that – great work, especially love the Cthulhu-like octopus!”

Ken Liang: “Great mood and atmosphere in this image. Especially love the creature design and the lighting really helps bring out its form (really glad that it’s not all wasted with poorly lit and dark environment). All in all, a very pleasing render to look at. So my question is, who’s giving the key to whom? Hmm…”

3rd Place

Benedicto Mendoza

We’re congratulating Benedicto Mendoza for receiving the third place!

Follow Benedicto :
Artstation

Benedicto about his entry:

“In a hidden magical vault where only the powerful wizard can access, lie a vast treasure made not with gold but with old paper and ancient words. Among this treasured magical book stands out a mystical and powerful one that comes to life when the magic hour comes. It flies like a butterfly and roams the infinite library where it searches for another one like it.“

Created using Blender and Photoshop.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Lukas Walzer: “The lighting and subtle choice of colors makes this image very pleasing to look at. There’s nothing overdone here and I really like the sparkling effect.”

Darko Vucenik:“Twilight is a special time in the eternal library. Some very special books come to life. Great lighting, texturing and the damaged edges on the book’s pages are excellent. Nice use of DOF to emphasize the book in the foreground. The background with those book mountains is magical too.”

Martin Klekner:“A real pleasing combination of lighting, colors and composition, love how polished this piece is! Even though maybe not too original, my eyes kept wandering back to it, really enjoying the flow and harmony of it. Great work!”

Ken Liang: “A very comfortable scene. I like how the glow lining is not over the top and accentuates the magic effect, a good example of ‘less is more’. I also like the choice of using the sunset as it does not only add to the mood but also to the story telling aspect. It’s as if the book is coming to life once the night arrives.”

Joseph Nickson: “Beautifully composed piece with some absolutely luscious material work, the book truly looks alive and the variation of the burnt pages sells the image completely.”

Honorable Mention

Ondrej Dufek

We’re congratulating Ondrej Dufek for receiving an honorable mention!

Follow Ondrej:
Artstation

Ondrej about his entry:

“I’ve tried a different approach. I wanted to do something more crazy and fun, no smartass interpretation of the topic this time. The first idea in my head was an image with stylized shapes, but realistic materials, to make a nice contrast.

But during the process I wasn’t feeling it at all and end up taking a more illustration approach, where I treated the whole image more like a vector graphics with bold flat colors and gradients. I ended up using no image textures, trying some grease pencil doodling, thick outlines and coloring everything during process and not just in the end after everything was blocked out or modeled.

It was fun, but I got kinda stuck in the end, not being able to enhance the visuals as much as I would like, because my workflow was not clear enough and I knew I wouldn’t be able to retexture everything in Substance for example, in time. But it was a fun exercise anyway.“

Created using Blender.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Lukas Walzer: “This one really stands out from the rest and delivers an amazing job of reinterpretation in terms of colors and mood. I just love those crazy cartoonish vibes and the vibrant colors!”

Aidy Burrows: “Love this interpretation of the theme. Such a fun stylized image – definitely stood out amongst the other entries.”

Ebrahim Umar-Khitab: “Ondrej presents a vibrant and playful take on the theme, with the nod to Adventure Time being a clever vehicle to switch his entry up into a character piece instead.”

Juan Hernandez: “Awesome piece of artwork. I love the crazy take Ondrej had on this one. A great choice of unusual colors give the piece a lot of life and it all works very well in composition. I also like how there is a combination of 3D and 2D objects which give the artwork a lot of personality. Well done!”

Ken Liang: “This is such a fun scene! I like the stylized approach taken and how everything is so wacky and whimsical. And the magic book is clearly the hero here, no question about that. My critique is that I would prefer brighter pastel color tones to go with the overall treatment.”

Honorable Mention

Fabrizio Bernasconi

We’re congratulating Fabrizio Bernasconi for receiving an honorable mention!

Follow Fabrizio:
Artstation

Fabrizio about the entry:

“With this artwork I simply wanted to convey the idea that reading is an experience that allows anyone to adsorb knowledge, experiences, concepts in an effortless way and helps you open your mind making you a better person.“

Created using Blender, Affinity Photo.

Clay Render

What our jury says:

Marius Iatan: “A very nice concept that makes you think. You can almost feel the connection with the book, and you have to learn what is the story behind the image.”

Aidy Burrows: “Really great work conjuring up quite the magical image in this one. Really like the paper/books from trees connection and nature at the heart of all magic here. It’s bright, pleasing and eye catching.”

Martin Klekner: “This render by Fabrizio Bernasconi picked my interest right away, with a nice combination of color, great details both on the book and the tree, good-looking materials, as well as the overall idea about the piece. Maybe too many glints for my taste, but otherwise, I really love this piece.”

Highlights: Training Arena

Let’s see how our newcomers have performed.

Raffle Winners

Learn who’s won our raffle.

Winners

  • Ogunniran Olanrewaju
  • Thomas Grandits
  • Vincenzo Pollidoro

The sponsors and supporters of this challenge.