33rd CG Boost Art Challenge for 3D Artists - Improve your 3D Skills!
The challenge ends on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021, at 16:00 CET! The winners will be announced two weeks later on January 5th, 2022.
For our 33rd challenge, we received 194 submissions with many epic myths and legends.
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 Robert Kouts for winning the first place!
Follow Robert:
ArtStation
”– As a part of thy initiation into the Beast Bandit Guild, thou must steal the egg of a SERPENT —
This artwork is based on the Feathered Serpent (In Aztec Mythology), with an original story.
I had a ton of fun making this image and learned so much! I sculpted a creature and used Substance Painter for the first time (which was awesome!). Pretty much everything in the scene was modelled, sculpted, retopologized, and then finally textured. This was a new asset creation workflow for me, but I found it very effective!
The first 6 days were spent purely on the idea, story and composition. Halfway through the challenge, I considered scrapping the project for a new one due to spending an entire day on the lighting and not getting anywhere, but I am so glad I pushed forward! Shortly after that, I kicked and fractured my toe, but that actually let me work on it more. The feathers on the Serpent are distributed using a combination of geometry nodes and Blender’s hair system. I spent quite a bit of time on color grading and post-production in Photoshop, which I hadn’t really done before, but greatly elevated the image.
Overall, this was an epic challenge, and I’m so glad I participated!
This was the longest time I’ve spent on a single image, clocking around 170 hours, and was an epic project to top off the year!”
Created using Blender 3.0, Cycles X, Substance Painter and Photoshop.
Christoph Werner: “I promise a successful future for Robert as an artist. His scene composition and directing with light is already very professional.”
Ewa Wierbik: “For me, this artwork has everything what great render should have. Beautiful lighting, clear and interesting composition, really nice colors and atmosphere. Very nice storytelling, I love the contrast between cold blue lights illuminating the Serpent and warm candles lights. It’s scary and cozy at the same time. Great artwork!”
Ozana Nemčanin: “The Artist has shown some impressive modeling and texturing skills. I love how rim lights frame this image. Love the color choice and composition balance.”
Ken Liang: “Great render, great lighting, nice choice of camera angle to accentuate the scale of the serpent and visual story telling. The egg is a nice touch for more backstory. Just felt that the serpent could use a more intimidating stare/expression.”
Gregory Smith: “The great lighting in this scene makes the entry stand out. The narrative is really readable, and is sold through the camera perspective and framing choices.”
Cedric Van der Kelen: “Great storytelling and composition. Color use and lighting are on point. The human pose could’ve been stronger by pushing the dynamic. Now he looks a bit clumsy. Awesome work.”
Darko Vucenik: “I love the feathered snake design. Those eyes are chilling. Beautiful sculpting both on the monster and architecture. The way lighting in the image guides the viewer is very well done.”
Lukas Walzer: “A nearly perfect scene! I really admire the skin details of the snake, but what stands out to me is the strong lighting that really makes the whole environment shine that would otherwise have been very easy to look dull.”
Martin Klekner: “A wonderful, cinematic piece, with clean composition, colors and light/dark balance. Love the design of the creature as well as the dynamic pose of the boy. Awesome job!”
Aidy Burrows: “I really liked where this led my eye around the image, at first to the head of the serpent and then down at the arrow aimed at it, and then I noticed something being dragged away, the serpent’s egg! And then my eye went back up the body of the serpent back up to the head to try to read the expression some more. Anyway, a good story was made! Good composition and lighting to help keep the details clear.”
Masha Bazueva: “I absolutely love this render. The lights, storytelling, colors and snake design are great! The composition and lighting guide us through the image perfectly, from the snake to the egg and the boy. I especially love how the snake’s eyes look and the feathers idea (very original)! Well done!”
We’re congratulating Kay John Yim for winning the second place!
Follow Kay:
ArtStation
“The Empyrean, known by many to be the highest transcended realm in the spheres of Heaven, is said to be utterly impossible to be described in human words.
Few warriors and exorcists who have ever traveled into the Empyrean and returned depicted it as a colonnaded garden of Eden, where angels fly around like bees, distributing peace and love; where waterlilies glide along the wind like fireflies, the petals of which are the enthroned souls of the faithful; some recounted the Empyrean as the palace of pure light, guarded by Archangels in the form of giant swans, overseeing the colonnaded garden and all souls since its existence.
Though pictured differently by many, all witnesses portrayed Empyrean as the source of all light and all creation, as traveler Dante Alighieri described in his poem “…this light, I saw, contained, bound up and gathered in a colonnaded rotunda, the leaves that scatter through the universe –beings and accidents and modes of life, as though blown all together in a way that what I say is just a simple light.”
It took me about 14 days to get to the final render; I have learned how to manage large scenes to avoid crashing during look-dev, including proxy-ing hi-poly objects, instancing and re-using objects as much as I could etc.“
Created using Cinema4D, Redshift, Rhino and ZBrush.
Marius Iatan: “A very nice take on the magic swan story, and also a good holiday-themed render. A well composed scene, with the main character well-supported by the environment details. Great work!”
Ozana Nemčanin: “I love how everything is done with great attention to detail. The composition is flawless and communicates such a warm story.”
Ken Liang: “Simply magical. The lighting direction is quite mesmerizing here. It really makes that giant goose feel like a god. The golden flower buds are what makes it look so magical. Really good job.”
Cedric Van der Kelen: “You have greatly improved on readability from your last entry, great progress! The scene is readable yet leaves enough to the imagination. Nice work.”
Darko Vucenik: “Truly epic image. Impressive amount of detail. I love how the lighting, architecture and composition all guide the viewer towards the swan and also emphasize the scale of the scene. Thousands of little glowing flowers are absolutely beautiful.”
Lukas Walzer: “A fantastic bomb of an image, overflowing with perfectly distributed lights and details! Contrasted and thus supported by the simple circular composition and lighting, the highly detailed image even works from the distance.”
Martin Klekner: “A mesmerizing scene, full of detail, texture and great visual storytelling. I love that even though there is so much going on in the picture, it is not overbearing and the focus is retained. My favorite piece of this competition. I would maybe just go easier on the smoke element, it makes the final piece a tiny bit messy in my opinion.”
Aidy Burrows: “Awe inspiring, bright and elegant, great use of lots of little lights and grand ornamental architecture to help pull the focus towards the large central focal point.”
We’re congratulating Diana Schulz for receiving the third place!
Follow Diana:
ArtStation
“The mythology is full of love between different mythical creatures and humans. So I choose a little scene with a Pan and a Fairy.“
Created using ZBrush and Blender.
Marius Iatan: “Very cute scene, with expressive and well created characters. Good level of detail, as well.”
Christoph Werner: “I like the mood Diana has created in her image. So much feelings in this scene. Very nice!”
Ewa Wierbik: “This artwork for sure stand out of the others. I love the idea. The only thing that bothers me is a lack of contrast and post-processing to make this artwork shining even more. Overall, very nice idea and good execution.”
Ozana Nemčanin: “I love how everything is done with great attention to detail. The composition is flawless and communicates such a warm story.”
Ken Liang: “Simply magical. The lighting direction is quite mesmerizing here. It really makes that giant goose feel like a god. The golden flower buds are what makes it look so magical. Really good job.”
Darko Vucenik: “Truly epic image. Impressive amount of detail. I love how the lighting, architecture and composition all guide the viewer towards the swan and also emphasize the scale of the scene. Thousands of little glowing flowers are absolutely beautiful.”
We’re congratulating Peter Černý for receiving an honorable mention!
Follow Peter
BlenderArtists
“Hi, this is my entry into the Mythology Challenge.
As the theme of my work, I chose the theme of dragons, as dragons intertwine with mythologies from Greek, through Nordic, Slavic, Germanic etc., under various names such as Dragon, Drak, Šarkan, Zmey, Smock…
My work is about a three-headed dragon based on the myths about Zilant or Zmey Gorinich. Work was based on old legends about Eastern European dragons, which have their origins in snakes called from Zmey – or Viper, so my dragon has a serpentine body and overall appearance.
In this work, I focused on a three-headed dragon that settled somewhere in the ruins of the Eastern Roman Empire, where people sacrificed young girls to him for fear of destruction. Until one day, a fearless young warrior from the Varangian guard, was found to fight and kill the dragon to save the beauty. The significance of the work is like a mythological battle between good and evil.
All my work is created using Blender version 3.0 with Cycles X rendering.
For this work, I used the Manuel Bastioni-Lab addon for character modeling, the vegetation is from the Botaniq addon, Cell Fracture addon for pillar destroy.
The final render I was editing in Blender Compositor, where I was adding some Glare, vignette, and later I added some smoke around the dragon. Some color corrections are done in Krita and final adjustments are made in Darktable.
I learned a lot of new things like working with curves, cell fracture, Blender compositor and lighting.
I enjoyed this topic of the challenge, I learned a lot and the whole work took me about 50 hours”
Created using Blender 3.0, Cycles X, Krita and Darktable.
Martin Klekner: “I love how cinematic this scene is and the design of the monster is simply awesome, with all its scales, subsurface scattering and saliva. Unfortunately, the characters are a bit weaker, at least compared to the monster – still, and outstanding job!”
Christoph Werner: “It was hard to vote this time. We had a lot of nice mythology scenes. Peter’s artwork was one of the best compositing and great creature works.”
Ewa Wierbik: “First of all, the amount of work put in to that artwork deserves to be mentioned. I like the storytelling, it really tells you what is happening. Hopefully the knight will finally rescue a poor woman. 🙂 Very nicely executed, good job!”
Ken Liang: “Great creature design. I like how the lighting compliments the scales on the creature to really show off the form and arc of the pose. Composition wise, I would suggest moving the warrior to the right some more to fill up the empty space there. I also felt that the render could have done without the damsel in distress because I didn’t notice it until I reviewed it the second time. Would be better if the creature were guarding some sort of treasure, then the illuminating glow of the spoils would stand out more to the viewers and make more sense lighting wise.”
Darko Vucenik: “Impressively ferocious hydra. Scales, fangs and drool are wonderfully executed. I like how the rim lighting and slight haze in the air separate the characters from the background. There is a lot of detail to look at, both on the characters and in the environment.”
We’re congratulating Parag Hardikar for receiving an honorable mention!
Follow Parag:
Youtube
“In Hindu religion, Lord Hanuman is an immortal God, about whom we have heard in Ramayana and Mahabharata. A few learned and wise people have reported seeing him.
There also have been numerous claims by common people to have spotted a strange monkey in some places, and many believe that it is the Mount Gandhamadana where Hanuman meditates.
Based on those facts and stories, for my artwork I created this story from my imagination – “Thousands of years after Ramayana, many people claimed of seeing Lord Hanuman near those caves in that mountain, but nobody got chance to meet him. Then after hearing that from many people decided to make a giant statue of Lord Hanuman meditating in that place and to worship Lord Hanuman, people also built an entire temple city in that place. After seeing that much of people’s love upon him, here Lord Hanuman appeared in the Avatar (form) of an old and poor Sadhu (Monk), so that nobody can recognize him as a Lord Hanuman, but he can see the real face and attitude of this people.”
This is my first participation, I always love to create and have created environment scenes including stories before. But during creating this artwork I have learned so many new things about compositing, colour grading, finishing projects in time, etc. I never have worked in the same way before. It took me around 13 days (Roughly 3-4 hours each day) to finish the project. I have my own asset library which I used and also created some new for this scene. I was planning to make it in Unreal Engine but then Blender 3.0 released, and I decided to create this entire artwork inside it. Overall, this challenge has refined my entire workflow and creation process a lot. Special thanks for everyone’s feedback, which I got on community platform.”
Created using Blender 3.0, Character Creator 3 and Photoshop.
Martin Klekner: “I watched this piece’s progression on the community forum, and I am happy to say it came out wonderful. I love the work with light and shadows on the statue, as well as all the vegetation and tree detail. I think the city would deserve a bit more work, maybe adding more people and little detail to it. Nevertheless, very good job!”
Gregory Smith: “There’s a fantastic sense of scale in this landscape, with atmosphere and depth. The designs of both the environment and the character are strong.”
Masha Bazueva: "Great render, I like the composition, the colors and the city design with the chimp statue. There are so many details to look at! Also, I saw the progression of this image on our community and this makes me appreciate this image even more, since I saw the effort behind it! The city looks a bit empty, I would probably add more people. Also, there is some texture repetition on the chimp statue’s pillow(or leg?) that is a bit disturbing and I would probably change the tone of the green texture on the mountain that looks a bit unnatural. Anyway, I like this work very much, well done!“
