Hello there people!

I recently held a contest about designing a friend for my original character Sayaka Tsuchimiya. There were 62 people announcing their participation, but there were 15 submitted entries in the end. While the number of total entries is rather disappointing, I appreciate the efforts of all those who did their best whether they submitted their entry or not. First and foremost, this contest was a practice and I hope you learned a thing or two while trying this kind of practicing method.

Before announcing the winner, I'll go trough few issues that affected negatively on judging without specifically pointing out which entries had these issues. This is both a general critique about the entries and also a lesson for people to learn. If you feel your entry has one or more of these issues, don't get disappointed. Hardly anyone get these things right on first or two tries (me included). Just mind the issues and work on them.

1. Repetitive general look
Probably the most noticeable issue in entries was repetitive viewing angles and/or poses. While drawing a same pose several times is an important practicing method, it potentially has negative impact on visual presentation when you are trying to tell a story. Similarly, if the characters were drawn repeatedly from one particular viewing angle, it affected negatively on the judging, even if the poses were different in each scene.

2. Too long or elaborated story
While telling a story was an integral part of the contest, some entries tried to tell too long or elaborated story. Since dialogue wasn't allowed, it's really difficult to tell a long or detail-rich story. The story also led to repetition mentioned above and the entries drifted away from the most important pose practicing part of the contest. The point of the story was just to give a reason for drawing the characters in various poses and situations, not to draw the attention away from them. Finding the balance was one part of the contest as well. If you look at my pose practices, you can see how "meaningless" stories I have used.

3. Distant beholder
This was quite interesting point, because some entries made me feel like outsider. It was like watching from afar and not really caring what's actually going on there. This feeling was augmented with entries that had repetition. Your art should engage the viewer in a way that they care what's happening in your work, because that makes your character feel alive and interesting. Especially in comic drawing it's very important to keep the beholder hooked all the time, otherwise they won't keep reading further. Entries that brought the beholder closer to the characters and even made them look at the beholder had a huge difference in the atmosphere. It was like I as the beholder was there next to the characters or looking trough their eyes, feeling their emotions and thoughts.

4. Where are they standing?
Sometimes the characters were "floating in the air" so to say, with no clear relationship to the ground whatsoever. It feels weird to look at the characters doing their stuff without any relationship to the ground (or any surface they are on) and sometimes it was hard to link two poses into one scene. Entries that had either a shadow or even a small hint about the orientation of the ground made it much more pleasant to look at the entry. It's part of the immersion that makes your drawings more believable. You can take a look at my pose practices to see how I establish the relationship between the character and the ground.

5. Composition
While not being the major judging factor in this kind of contest, it's good to realize the importance of composition. Good composition can draw the attention away from many issues by making it easier for the viewer to look at your work. Some of the entries were rather confusing and tiring to follow because there wasn't any composition whatsoever. There was either too much or not enough empty space between the drawings or the canvas borders, or the it wasn't easy to find the next "panel". You can find a "good" example about this issue in my 10th pose practice, in which you are very likely to skip pose #8.

As I said in the contest information, I didn't pay much attention on the actual anatomy, proportions or perspective. There were issues with these in about every entry, but I'm not going to go trough them here.

So who won the contest?

Well, to be frank, this entry didn't fare exceptionally well on establishing the relationship between the character and the ground. However, in some occasions the visual cues were sufficient and there were many other strong points that made up for this issue.

5. Pleasant composition
Each scenario were nicely contained and easily identifiable. It was fairly intuitive to read, in other words, the eyes flowed from scene to scene effortlessly. The space was efficiently used, but it didn't feel suffocating. The empty space between scenes 5. and 6. was actually beneficial to the story, as it's a good transition between the two places (I don't know if this was intentional, but it worked).There could have been slightly more empty space around the edges, but that wasn't too distracting.

Now the actual poses and viewing angles.
6. Poses and body language
There were good variation of poses in this entry. Although there were many sitting poses, these were compensated with varying postures and viewing angles. The characters have believable interaction and their emotions and personal traits are easily identifiable. Although I couldn't decipher the details about Chieko being a writer, I could feel how she doesn't like that people watch over her shoulder while she is doing her magic. Sayaka is clearly a scaredy-cat and just as clumsy as seen on my pose practices.

7. Viewing angles
The use of viewing angles truly benefited the story telling, there were no room for confusion at all. The focus points in each scene were just on the right things, such as on the dropped book on scene 4. (Chieko looking at the book, so the beholder will look what she is looking at) and on the books Chieko is holding on scene 9. (the whole scene revolves around the books). This entry also had some ambitious viewing angles. While not perfectly executed, they got the job done and proved the artist's willingness to challenge himself.

In overall, this entry was carefully compiled, well thought and balanced. I don't know how often Chieko will appear in my pose practices, but I now have a reason to draw Sayaka in a cozy cafe.

Since there were so few entries, I will feature each entry in this journal post. I'm sorry if some of the thumbnails are a tad small and that I didn't include participant name or icon. Here you go in random order: