maniean

I like to base the artwork on apparent effort.  Obviously everyone has different tastes (anime, retro, etc.) as do I, so it's not fair if i vote just because I prefer ie; a cute girl in a tree over a photo of two people kissing.  I like to see what the person submitting the graphic actually did to enhance/improve/alter the given stock.

1. It's a picture of an ogre (?) on a black background (nothing so far), with a stroke (barely anything), and a white inner box.
3. The background appears to already have COME with the elf.  So basically it's just a cutout of a wallpaper that someone else made, with a semi-transparent layer and hearts and leaves and text over it.  
4. The first living sign of actual effort!  It's pretty cute, but something about it is really off to me..
5. This looks ENTIRELY original, but at the same time it looks really messy.  There are two glares and a mess happening in the background.  Props on originality though.
6. I really like the newspaper effect.  Typography bonus, and I like the paint splatters and balloons.  Not digging the flowers in the top left corner though.
7. Uh...

My vote has to obviously go with 6.  I like the elf, but that's ALL I like about the signature.  Anyone can PICK an elf with a background there.  I would like to see what you could've actually done WITH that elf.  I bet most people are picking that one SOLELY for the fact that there's a cute anime elf girl in a bunny suit.  6 gets a lot of points for originality + lots for the apparent effort and the artistic style.

Hey thanks guys. I left before thinking this place was kind of...bad, but it's not to see that real work does actually get appreciated around here. I'm currently working on something, and I'll post it up as soon as I finish with it!

Wow, I left this place thinking SOTW was just a joke here, but I can see that real improvements have been made.  Thanks Strategist.

EDIT:  Is there a clear limitation on how much of a stock we can use?  Because to be honest, one of the entries in SOTW 15 looks like someone just took a wallpaper with an elf on it, cut out a nice sized box, then placed a semi-transparent box + default hearts on top of it.  And it's winning.  To me, that's really as effortless as placing a textbox on a GIF, but hey, at least it's not ridiculous looking...
However I would think that a GRAPHICS competition should be like at least 70% your own originality.   A wallpaper that includes a nice forest background along with your elf, then not even doing much to it...isn't that crossing the "not your work" line?

EDIT 2: It's not that I have problems with the sig, it's that I have problems with people doing minuscule things to a piece of art and calling it "theirs". I'm okay with it if everyone else deems it okay, but I would like to say that your job as graphic "artists" (in the loosest sense) is to make something creatively new with the image. Not just give it a few touchups.

I'm looking at the vote distributions and really?  I can understand #5 and #7 being up there because they're good and you can tell that the artist put work into them.I also see #10 being up there because it's simple, eye-catching, and it's a decent example of vector art (my personal favorite).  
But like #3 is just a .gif taken from PandF when Candice touches the hallucinogenic moss with text over it.  Yet people are voting for it.I was going to submit an entry next week, but clearly since no one really votes fairly and pretty much votes for their friends (let's not bullsh*t here, guys.  I honestly don't believe people would unbiasedly pick some of these over others) or vote as a joke, I'm probably not going to.
It's also a huge insult to people who actually put in effort on their submissions.
I'm looking at last week's competition and really... "green skorcheio".

I got bored of watching my P3's at like level 35ish. Moving them around was such a pain in the ass. :/But I heard it was really good money at level 50 when you can just harvest gems.