Steampunk Contest For $20K Worth In Prizes: Second Life Steampunkers Should Totally Own This

Sponsored by the CG Society of Digitial Artists, the Steampunk Myths and Legends Contest is taking entries for the next couple months, and for the many inventors of Caledon, New Babbage, and the rest of Second Life's steampunk societies, it must seem like catnip:

This challenge asks you to render traditional myths and legends in the steampunk style using elements of gears, springs, brass and steam power. Re-imagine legendary characters from some of the world's most ancient stories, such as a steam-powered minotaur, or a Zeppelin-mounted Thor, hurling lightning bolts from the sky.

Prizes include all kinds of graphics and video production software, to carry your steampunk art to even greater heights. All the details you need here. Hat tip: Jeanricard Broek.

Comments

[pixol]

I laugh when people say how awesome the graphics an dcontent in SL are.... There's no way In-World SL content creators can compete with real CG artists.

Not using SL as the graphics platform for development anyway... the SL graphics are garbage compared to the kind of 3D graphics designed in Maya, XSI or 3D studio...or even Zbrush or Mudbox... not to mention the lighting, shadows and rendering capabilities.

SL content creators will not OWN this competition... if anything they may finally learn how pros design in 3D. I design in SL and professionally in AAA games industry.... there really is no comparison when it comes to quality and detail in design... maybe one day when SL can actually import .obj's etc.

Until then SL is just a hack job of a 3d program for content creation. It just has to be said.

[Loki Eliot]

Yeah this competition is more towards artists and a depiction of old myths. i think you'll find the thing that drives an SL artist is not souly the graphical look, but the over all experience and memories. In SL Steampunks get to live steampunk with enough visual stimuli to totally immerse. A lot of the legends and myths in SL steampunk are adaptions of old tales, traditions and myths brought into SL from their own cultural past .
Unfortunitly this competition looks to cater only for for visual arts, where as the SL Steampunks can only claim to OWN the Steampunk experience. Though there have ben some rather impressive visual things pop up recently now that sculptys are now mastered. Who knows...

[Hotspur O'Toole]

Foolish me, I am thwarted at the starting gate. Why go on, I ask you?

[CyFishy Traveler]

Raw screenshots may not be that impressive, but I've seen some amazing stuff done with a little post-production work. I wouldn't go as far as Hamlet in assuming that SL's existing Steampunk community would automatically 'own' this competition, but I wouldn't write them off completely, either.

[Salazar Jack]

If this passage, from their page of Instructions, is to be taken at face value there may still be a chance, only a glowing ember perhaps, in forging a worthy entry from our Grid:

"The story is the primary component and is the most crucial element in all judging. The emotive impact and implication of 'the story behind the image' is the aspect that is most important.

Your work must capture the imagination of the viewer and draw them in without relying on any prior knowledge of the story."

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/steampunk/instructions.php

Nothing ventured... and all that.