Snake

PCFox: I checked the link, and I can assure you I am not this person's "best friend". These sprites were made for the challenge on this site by me alone and were not donated to anyone. I'd say this was obvious, but I can understand that you'd want to make sure. You have to expect this to happen every once in a while I suppose.

The picture was made the way it was because my PC broke down at the time. As for using msPaint, I just enjoy using it despite having access to Photoshop CS3 and whatnot. It works for me. I've never insiunated that anyone should be impressed by this picture and quite frankly, I'm surprised how people read so much into what I basically made as a christmas gift, but if it inspires people to create more art, then I'm certainly happy about that.

For now though, I'm busy making something better.

Thanks for the wellwishes guy's. Cake has been eaten and all is well.

The B.O.B... you're making me crave an eyepatch.

Og jeg takker så meget Mirre :9

Though I understand what he's trying to say, something else commes to mind during his end statements. "Are you willing to gamble with the fate of the world? How lucky do you feel?"

His conclution is that the safest thing to do is use tons of recources and change they way our world works, in case something might happen. I've heard this argument before. Let's take something like, religion. The safest thing is to be religious, because if you happen to be wrong, you'll go to the nice place instead of the bad one. You'll just have to devote your entire life to do it, and besides, there are so many telling you you should. All for the sake of being safe. That is more a threat than an argument, but never mind that.

In any case, most of the worlds "dangerous" pollution commes from oil and gas, which will most likely be depleeted within the next decade. Of course others still exist, but the biggest badguys will be forced to be changed into something more less toxic anyway. I'm not fan of pollution. Not because the world is going to die, but because it can be hazardous to your health. That's a big difference. For example using Diesel cars send out less CO2, but are more dangerous to humans. Go figure.

You named your dog Pixel? I thought I was the only one who had thought of that. Ah well.

As for crits, there's a few jaggy lines near the eyes and on the contour of the ears when his head is tilted. Looks good though.

I should really check this site more often.

You've done a nice job on the colours here, I see you've been thorough in your research. There are a few things I normally wouldn't do though. Four things I always focus on is: perspective, composition, lighting and focus.

I always make sure that I have a perspective that makes sense, even in abstracted pictures. The water you made in this case has it's horizontal line too low according to the squid. I understand that you had my picture's fading horizon in mind, but the viewer-angle is very different. I would also have added a lot of highlights to the squid, using something that's reflective is a good opportunity to guide the eyes of the viewer. The shadow could also use some more detail to lead the focus towards the middle. It was more a coincidence that I didn't add dirt in my picture, as it looked like it would require an extra colour at the time.

The whole picture might benefit by being shifted a bit upwards, or extended on the left as there's a lot going on in the bottom left, but little at the top right. The fading trees seem a little unfinished and could do with a little touch up, the water could also use some darker shades as it's fadingpoint is usually the lightest shade (regardless of land in the end)

In regards to the colours, you're pretty close. What I did was use colours with very little saturation or brightness. I have a few colours that are about exactly the same hue, but they're warm and cold. Because the colours are so much alike, I can use just one warm or cold colour to make the rest of the figure seem warm or cold.

In any case, It's a wonderfull picture and I'm honored someone takes the time to make something like this. I still don't understand what it is people see in Colossal Katamari, but I guess I must have done something right.

I had the option to buy Vista when I upgraded last week. I didn't as it's new and compatability and bugs will still take a while to sort out. I run XP and don't think I'll change that anytime soon.

All the fancy eyecandy in Vista have been in Linux for ages and I don't see anything about it to make me want to "upgrade". I think I can live without bending and wobbling 3d menus.

Microsoft have done an exelent marketing job. I mean, their slogan right now is: "Wow. Vista is here." I can just feel the exitement. That, and they made people stand during their presentation at the digital convention this week.

What I've noticed here, and find is an important point, is the fact that this is decided by a congress in the US. Yet, this is something that is going to have an effect on the entire world. Regardless of who invented the net or who is the larges userbase, non-american internet users are going to be affected as the net is a world wide chanel.

Ugh... What people will do for money.

Once again, thanks for the feedback guys. To answer the questions:

@mikey: The wings are a mixture of Mantis wings and Angler fish fins. A mantis can actually fly. In fact it's very good at it, though usually the wings are tucked away on it's abdomen and are mainly used for escape. Given that the Girantis is partially composed of a mammal, it would most likely be too heavy to fly. The angler fish I chose can make a faint light in some of it's fins (hence the bright colour), so the wings are mostly there as decoration. They can be used as a speed boost in full galop as well as rudders when changing direction (much like the tail of a cheetah).

@jalonso: The background in the icon was really just to make the icon more interesting. The picture was made so I could post it on various background colours, which is why there's some sellout on it. The sky in the icon was to compliment the description really. If I am to put in a background, I'd have to do quite a few changes to the original.

@spunos: It's about the size of a small elephant. It's main body is roughly close to a rhino.

@milkjon: The font was just doodled with the middle circle paintbrush in msPaint. Thought it looked spiffy.

@Flyguy: I can't say the colour choice in this piece is one of my best, but I made it so it would stand out against most types of background so using less sadurated colours wouldn't work as well for my purposes. In general though, I try to apply pretty standard colour theory. You choose your palette based on what  impression or message you want people to get. In this case, I used bright sadurated colours to take away the the feeling that this was some sort of freak. Then I can use hot-cold contrasts. The more sadurated a colour is, the hotter it is (in most cases). There's also red/yellow-blue contrasts to add to that. Lastly it's considering shadows and where the light is hitting it to define what hue it should have (sadurated, unsadurated, hot, cold, neutral). There's hardly any hot-cold effects applied here as there is no background, so the warm and cold colours could be better used to unify the whole thing in terms of colour and composition.

@CuteBunny: I wouldn't be so sure about that...