The ALVINLEEART.COM DIGITAL COLOR CHALLENGE has been concluded and we have come to terms with the five finalists by our board of judges. There were a plethora of submissions to review and after much consideration and many great entries later these are the pieces of work that we found were not only well executed but stood out from the crowd. We want to thank you all for your generous submissions and hard work put towards this contest, it was greatly appreciated! Three of these finalists were actually featured earlier during the competition and still remained in the running for the grand prize. Congratulations for making it on to the voting session, your work speaks for itself! We apologize for the delay of the announcement of our finalists but as you can understand we had hundreds of submissions to review and as the deadline drew near the competition grew more intense. It was a difficult decision to make as we butted heads, argued for specific submissions and debated for days but I hope you are pleased with our final selection.
Vote for your favorite submission now!
NOTABLE SUBMISSIONS:
These are some submissions that we felt were above average and definitely worthy of being noted. These were all very well done and just barely made the cusp of our final five. Here they are for you to see!
Jorge Maese
Fifi Xu
Ryan Burt
Laura Galiffe
Andrea Errico
Muhammed Ansar Ali
Neeraj Menon
Stephen Hetrick
Claudia Madez
THE FIVE FINALISTS (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Color Challenge Finalist, Danny Araya
Danny Araya
Silver Spring, USA.
http://danielaraya.deviantart.com/
Color Challenge Finalist, Raineiro Cobos
Raineiro Cobos Castro
Bogota, Colombia.
www.raineiro.com
Color Challenge Finalist, Nala Fontaine
Nala Fontaine
Montreal, Canada.
http://nalafontaine.deviantart.com/
Color Challenge Finalist, Seth D Jones
Seth D Jones
Shepherdsville, USA.
Color Challenge Finalist, Fabian "Monk" Schlaga
Fabian “Monk” Schlaga
Kassel, Germany.
http://monk-art.deviantart.com/
Jorge Maese
Fifi Xu
Ryan Burt
Laura Galiffe
Andrea Errico
Muhammed Ansar Ali
Neeraj Menon
Stephen Hetrick
Claudia Madez
October 13th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
hy Alfred thankz, yeah i noticed, my problem is that i went in a more traditional direction, maybe i was thinking sf3 is more niche, ans the characters arent that famous like sf2 characters, thats why i didnt mess so much with their colors, anyway i loved to be in your contest, and i would surely love to do a collab with alvin , to redeem myself
October 13th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Wow Jorge, didn’t expect you would ask this…
Like I said in a couple messages before. Alvin thinks very highly of it, your skills are top notch and I’m even confident in saying that you have a career ahead of you if you don’t already. Your skill is quite honestly higher than some colorists that are in the field. It just so happened that Alvin thought that your piece wasn’t as good, as the final 5, which had nothing to do with your technical art skill but the overall package presented before us…
October 13th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
hy Alfred i would really like to know what did Alvin think about my submission?
Best
October 13th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
@anotherartistithaway: Your post ended in our spam catcher, I had to approve your post.
I think you are overreacting… seriously.
My response: Alvin and I truly believe Raineiro’s entry was very creative. Infact and I’ll quote Alvin: “I would be comfortable if this peice won (the contest), it’s that good.”. I’ve analyzed this piece for hours and even pulled this into Photoshop to look at the details up close. The cool thing about it is that each character actually has some color within, ie; Ryu’s head band and gloves has a tint of red, Q’s hat as well as Hugo’s shirt, Alex’s hair & Sean’s gi has a slight yellow tone etc. It’s very very subtle, but very cool that it’s actually there. Ontop of that, the light blue tint is very detailed and accurately added to the piece, which shows adept levels of light and shadow (despite how low the levels were). I can’t convince you once you feel negative about it, art is very subjective and personally there are lovers and there are haters to every piece of work. We so happened to see the beauty of it in what some others could not. I admit, when I first saw it I didn’t know what to think of it, but it grew on me…
Raineiro – Alfred Experiment
I’ll post up my version of Raineiro’s peice right here, and perhaps this might enlighten some of you. Basically I made some color modifications and contrast/level adjustments aiming for a warmer and slightly brighter hue, no addition layers or brushes were added to get this effect. After the modification, you can clearly see some of the color separations etc.
Courtesy of Raineiro of course, and I hope he doesn’t get upset about it.
As for Seth, prior to the end of the contest, SETH went berserk and literally spammed both our emails being afraid that he would have missed the contest. When infact he had already submitted his entry multiple times. We actually received his first submission on Sept 30@10:35pm, and then subsequent ones before and after the deadline.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:30 am
@ Admin-Alfred or Alvin..
I would like to know did u even got my submission.. http://nixuboy.deviantart.com/art/Street-fighter-tribute-entry-138650020
Cuz I didin’t got any confirmation mail.. And if u guys dit got it would it be too bad to mail me back what u liked it and what u disliked.
I would really appreciate ur anwers.
Thanks
Niko Metsälä
October 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am
First off, thanks again to both Alvin and Alfred for hosting the contest and putting up an opportunity like this. I had a lot of fun working on this and quite clearly so did a whole lot of other people. I’m more than honored to have made it to the finalists as well and I’m sure the others feel the same.
I voted for Seth’s piece, personally I love his take on it. I’m not usually one for pieces with a more airbrushed look, but in this case it works awesomely. The softness doesn’t detract anything from the individual shapes, or from the piece as a whole at all in my opinion. Also I love color palette, the really cold blue shadows are a nice touch.
If Jorge would have made it to the finals it would have been a tough call for me though, would have probably voted for him then. In general there are some truly great submissions in the runners up category though; Fifi’s, Cassie’s and Teben’s (Stephen) pieces I really enjoyed too.
Addressing any potential hard feelings: public polls are always a popularity contest in one way or another, but I like to think the voters were smart enough and had the common sense to decide based on the images themselves, and their personal opinions thereof, instead of anything else.
Lastly, of course I’d like to thank anyone that voted for me so far for the support. It means a lot to me and I’d absolutely invite you all to my house warming party if I ever had one. :]
October 13th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Congratulations for the Alvin Lee and your team and all those people who participated in the contest.
Hey Alfred i would like to have a critic of my submission, I want to improve my skills ^^
thanks very much
October 13th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Nala did some fantastic work. Voted.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:33 am
@Coshito
yeah, it would of suckd big time if people cheated their way in. But that’s, of course, not what happened.
I actually did make it on time. With question, I asked about which mail address I should of sent my piece to. As in the ‘faqs’, there was a different submission address than in the ‘contest rules section’. I actually sent in my submission 10:30pm 9/30 to the one stated in the contest rules, not FaQS section. Thats why I was going all crazy -becuase i didnt get a confirmation, becuase the rules werent clear. Sorry if thats confusing
October 13th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Hy, im a huge fan of your work, and i love everything related to street fighter, so thats why i was eager to know the finalists, of this contest, and really i feel a little dissapointed, as i see no contest on this “contest” , also i find it very disturbing that i watched your pages days, ago and i found a comment by salamandros a.k.a Seth D Jones saying that he didn make it on time, and sent the mail to another mail, i find it a lack of respect to the guys who made it on time, and check out the rules of this contests, i like way better some of the notable submissions, than some of the finalists, hope it will be better next time
October 13th, 2009 at 2:00 am
These entries were amazing…good luck to the finalists. Means I’ve really got to work hard if I want to improve my skills.
@Site Admin-Alfred Is it possible to get a critique as well?
I know you must get asked a lot, but this was my first real digital painting and I want to know how I did.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:46 am
@admin: pity you wont be givin any other critique, i was goin to ask if you could critique my work because i think its very important comming from one of the judges or alvin himself, but i do understand and i think u guys picked some good ones…im quite honoured to be just featured, i might work harder next time! we all should do.
my vote is for Monk, not because he’s the most popular, i think its a really god entry, great colors and it really stands out from the other 4, plus, the textures make it look really really cool
my second one is the one of dANNY araya, ibuki’s part looks pretty cool n.n
October 13th, 2009 at 12:41 am
thank you very well said!
October 13th, 2009 at 12:37 am
My apologies to those responsible, not wishing to be insightful I must say …
Something doesn’t make much sense …
Obvious that the finalists, with the exception of Monk, are below (some of them a lot) of the level shown by the participants listed in the section for “remarkable”.
Which is not very consistent, Is not the idea that the best runners are in?
I refer to technical shortcomings, too soft gradients, unique light sources that harm the individual reading of collage, unique shade temperatures to all persons in the collage, whatever.
I think the competition is unattractive “in sport terms” in such conditions.
It would be much more appropriate and interesting that in the group of voting were the best profession and level. (George Messer, Andrea Errico, for example.)
Really gives the impression that it is easy to unfairly left one participant
October 13th, 2009 at 12:22 am
Great job done everyone! I totally respect the decision made the judges and kudos to them for putting in the hard work reviewing so many submissions! We should most definitely give them credit for that.
Voted casted!
Glad to see so many great submissions. They are indeed deserving.
(P.S: I see some people asking for critiques here, so i was wondering if I could have some feedback as well? But it’s totally fine if the admins are too busy.
Can totally understand that 
)