Go with L! Those are awesome!
DWIII - 3D - XP-58 - Aeria
Morgado
#42
Hard to pick, and kind of depends on what you’re looking for in terms of mood.
B and M are very harmonious colour wise, K makes the gal pop out from the wings. But im also really digging L, makes her look a kind of dark angel or something
erik_j
#43
B C M and J if you put some grays or such in it to make less uniformly chromatic.
I like the dragon heads in A also.
personally don’t think you need fire:y gradients to denote fire element. imo it doesn’t have to be overly obvious.
anyway looking totally stunning! so much eye-candy without getting overdone or unbalanced! I’m totally floored x¨U must improve the wow-factor of mine! yours is a book example in my eyes.
wish this would be for a game so I could wait for inevitable doujinshi 8 =|
danmason
#44
I really like C,I and M. I recon the darker colour schemes are a little more original. By using the different browns and earthy colours you could make the dragons heads on the wings look really organic, and almost carved, could be quite cool.
walrus
#45
Lovely work so far! Personally, I like the ones with the strongest values and a less varied palette, like A, C, and L. (Plus, team colors! Go team!) The problem I see with B is a lot of middle-range values make it stand out less, and it feels more removed from the CGSociety colors, which could then mean integrating the logo instead, and where are you going to stick that? (Although a tattoo around the navel could work… 
)
I also have to echo Arcor’s sentiments: Your artifact design is really nice!
Keep going… Good luck!
XP-58
#46
I read very useful comments from everyone, thanks a lot!
I’m thinking of trying out the colors later during texturing time so I can see just which kind of scheme is able to bring out the thing best. I’m thinking of plugging in some effects too so that should have some coordination with the colors too.
erik_j : I think you’re right about the fire gradients. Those orange and yellow colors just seem to sprout everywhere 
With fire effect it’s going to be a surekill indication of the element anyway. I’m glad that you found the character balanced enough. That was one of the thing I’m worrying most, whether the amount of gimmicks are going to ruin it. I put them around to get the eyes travel between those ‘highlight’ point, just like in illustration’s composition. I’m just a noob, but I’ll see what I can say about improving the wow-factor of yours after this. Anyway, LOL for the texts in smaller fonts! XD
walrus + musk : I put the logo on the cloth on top of the breast. It looks fitting there anyway so that way I’m freed from color restriction. A was my intended CGS color scheme, though maybe it’ll look more CGS using red-black gradient like in L too 
For the last two days I’ve been cramping my brain with zbrush video and tut I dug from zclassroom and zbrushcentral while testing out some workflow stuff. My brain is overloaded now … :banghead:
I got zero experience in using zbrush so I wish I can create one learning model first but well … doesn’t seem like I have enough time so I’ll just start using some of the less obvious stuff on her (like that piece on the back of the head or those on the back covered by hair) to level up before touching the main parts.
Since I got no idea how many tris I need to spend for the effects, and thus also how many tris I can spend for this and that parts, whether those particular ones got plane treatment, how big their UVs are going to be, and so on, I decided to just sculpt the highres model first, and then model the lowres using med-division model imported from zb as a guide. Normal baking will then be done either in max, or xnormal using max exported cage if it gets more than 1m tris.
I found something strange yesterday, tell me it’s not a common knowledge. In Max (2008), UV seams seem to “alter” the normal on those area by a bit during render. So if I have a UV seam in a “normal” normal map area which involve large bump, there will be facets of the poly visible during render there. This, however, doesn’t appear in viewport or XNormal. And also, the reverse is true. If I bake normal map in max on an object with that UV seam, the resulting normal map has facet/seam in that area. The seam on normal map, however, negates the effect. As such, it will look just fine during render, although seeing it in viewport or XNormal will in the other hand produces the seam/facet again. Damn weird! :shrug:In any case it’s safer to hide the UV seam as much as possible though. I discovered this when I mistakenly use a sphere from zb that has all of its UV faces separated from each other (despite being adjacent perfectly).
MartinNielsen
#47
Very nice work all the way 
F and L look fine to me, but it’s a good idea to try the colors as textures later.
Maddog-CP
#48
Wow, just saw your color scheme tests, great stuff, my favs are L + M.
Great way to do colors, Im learning so much about concept work from joining this competition its great! keep going!
erik_j
#49
oh btw: totally forgot about the summoning element, in case you did too and aren’t sure you want fire perhaps summoning runic dragons like her ornaments?
REKLAS
#50
Seconded. The colors in I are awesome looking. It has great contrast and a perfect amount of variety while not having too crazy of a color scheme like some of the others do. Of course I will say that it looks a bit on the dark side which might not be what you’re going for. Looking sweet though. Good luck on the 3d. That’s what I need to start on too.
XP-58
#51
If anybody thought that I’m dead, well I’m not, but my computer was :sad:. It crashed while bringing along 2 harddrives with it. One of them went totally dead (there goes 500 GB) :eek:. Luckily none of my working files are affected, but my time got wasted fixing the mess and now there’s less than 2 weeks to the deadline now. I’ll need caffeine …
Anyway here’s the main body in ZB (base model in MAX). Obviously not as good as some of the masters here. But well, if you don’t count in some ugly spheres I used for testings, this character is going to be my 1st ZB model. Supposed to be a rush work to hit the deadline, but still ended up very slow in progress.
Morgado
#53
Agreed, its looking very nice. only perhaps the hips could b a litle wider for a more voluptuous form in my opinion.
erik_j
#54
I think the hips look quite wide though but the midle body looks sort of short averagely speaking. if it were longer and allowed for a thinner waist the hips would seem more curvy I guess. though the ornaments are already done and stuff I guess.
B3liar
#56
Great stuff - congratulations!
I prefer those color shematics (A,C,I,K)
Perhaps u should overlay them! ;-D
Keep it up!
Regards, B3liar
XP-58
#57
Thanks everyone for the comments.
Below is the twin dragon + bird pack. The pack was the first thing I tried to sculpt, although the body got finished first. Maybe you can find some traces of ugly sculpting remnants of my first struggle with ZB :rolleyes:. Anyway the fangs are a bit thin right now … and now I notice there’s a misplaced hole on the nose, just when did that happen …
The hip is covered by the dragon pack so I think the size doesn’t really matter.
Gyorkland
#58
Hey man I went through almost the same my mainboard died on a hollyday! here on Ecuador 4 days lost. I replaced it but my pc is still not working too good, I’ve been making my updates from work.
Hope you can make it, same for me too
You 3d is looking as fine as your 2d hottest girl I’ve seen around the contest. Good luck man
XP-58
#59
A little update, the hat. Not particularly very detailed or what, but well …
Gyorkland : Yeah man, computers just seem to die in critical moments. Scanning and recovering that crashed harddisk alone took me forever to finish! Hope you can make it too!