Hello all, and congratulations to the winners of round one!

This is just a friendly reminder that a LOT of hard work was put into the images that were posted, and that we, as voters, should appreciate that.

If we could please try to put in at least a little comment, critique, or thought into our votes, it would really be more appreciated and likely HELPFUL toward the following rounds. Sometime's it's nice to state WHY you voted for the one you did vs. the competition in a POLITE way.
Was it difficult for you to choose? Say so! It's never fun to lose, but knowing that your chop was at least CONSIDERED could make you feel a bit better.

We're all guilty of the ... at one point or another.


TL;DR-- IT'S HELPFUL TO COMMENT WHEN YOU VOTE.

Gongrats to all the winners of round one And well done all players in first round.

I was hoping to respond to comments at my image, but I can't see how i can do so. It looks like this was done in the past... maybe I'm imagining it. Anyway, if this is not the appropriate place, feel free to nuke or move this post.

First, thanks to the many who voted and left comments, considering it wasn't really necessary. For those who asked: the rat, cats, and engine block were hand-drawn. Doing Ed Roth pics carries risk as this style has a high love-hate factor. But I'm here primarily to deliver LOLs and occasional wows to the lovers and entertainment value to the haters. I think I succeeded there.

Personally, I had the same sentiment as Sanctuary who wrote "ugh, what the". I am finishing up a huge project at work and only had Mon & Tues nights & the wee hours of Weds to work on this entry; I believe I posted at 4am local (7am contest time). I had to make concessions just to meet the deadline. And there are blatant errors I just didn't have time to address. But I really wanted to participate and hoped my effort would be good enough to make it to Round 2. I don't fault my competitor for the no-show: life happens. Though now I'll never know if the effort truly was good enough.

I read from Tofu the Great and others that the site used to be about teaching and leaving feedback so I tried to do so with my comments on other entries. If I didn't leave you a comment, I just ran out of steam. And if I provided hints, they were intended as helpful and not asshattery arrogance. There are a lot of great artists here; I don't count myself among them and I certainly haven't earned anything. But I have done a lot of critiques in the past.

the202 recently referred to himself as an "amateur/enthusiast" but his profile tells a different story. His tournament portfolio is top-notch and I know he was a finalist a few years ago. I'll wish him good luck but I seriously doubt he'll need it. I'm honored just to be given the chance to compete with him. I should have more time to commit to this round so I hope I provide a worthy opponent for you to crush into dust. Haha.

Sorry for the long post... busy day ahead. Again, thanks all! And Good Luck to all Round 2 competitors!

Hand drawn work... definitely a bonus! It's really too bad we can't inform viewers of this kind of work while they're voting, but it would take away from the anonymity.
Last year we created a "source" thread for everyone to share their sources/drawings with everyone. (After the contest was closed, of course) The results were amazing! Talented lot here.

Bigger reminder is to vote for your opponent. It's courtesy and good form. I saw at least one who didn't do that.

That too! Don't be the tool that gets the vote from your opponent and wins by one after not voting for them.

oops. I would probably be that one. It's been a while since I've been around PSC (about 2 years) and I forgot that you could vote for your opponent. My apologies to my opponent .mv. in the first round. The H2H roped me back into chopping. Nice to be at it again.

Congrats to the losers of round 1 you guys stepped up and gave it a good shot. But it is a tough competition, now the loser bar is right down the street, sit anywhere and watch round 2.
Extra congrats to those getting an unexpected second chance, dust yourselves off and get back on the horse and be ready for a tougher comp.

No shows it's a shame you couldn't make it after signing up.

Very good point Marty.

Congrats to all the round 1 winners...most of us were dark horses, so good, great! luck in the next round, when it's head to head with the ones who were able to skip directly to round 2 due to past performance. Even with all the no-shows, I appreciate the fact that everyone got the chance to participate, even if they didn't/weren't able for whatever reason. Maybe, for the actual competition in the future...it should automatically allow the non-participants to drop out and the competitors to bump up against the next competitive entry, head2head, even if it wasn't who they were originally going head to head against? And THEN put in the brackets? I just say this because I'm not sure I would have had the chance to compete if all comers weren't taken. But the code behind that might be a pain, and the competitive brackets couldn't be figured out ahead of time.

I do agree that the people who commented were very helpful: apparently my Pegasus needed more shadows! lol which I can definitely see now, and even wondered about but I did it all in 1 day, so no self-perspective with time - though not sure I would have known what was wrong anyway -Even in losing round 1, I feel that all the comments helped me learn a lot. Thanks! If anyone wants to PM me with private crit, I would appreciate it. [PS- the outer glow was unnecessary -it was leftover from a more ethereal complex messy scene I scrapped, but forget to turn off.]

Several of the h2h's were hard for me to decide, and I guess I should have commented...I came back several times on some of them, and sorry I didn't say more, but felt fearful (silly me) of saying the wrong thing. I tried to vote for myself, just because on another site I didn't once, and I lost a prize I really wanted, by 1 vote, and then assumed I just wasn't allowed to vote in the h2h I was in per the error message. I did look for some forum posts about the h2h, and the comments above would have been helpful in round 1, but we all live and learn, and now can move forward to applying them in round2.

Good luck and congrats again!

I make an effort to comment on every single match. Even those whose opponents were a no-show. Theres only a couple entries where I didn't have much to say except 'good luck in the next round'.

I also try to comment on both chops in each matchup. Not just the one I am voting for. When I lose (which I probably will this round) I always read up to see if anyone who voted for my competitor made a comment about why they didnt vote for me. Its reassuring and helps when making future chops.

Me I didnt vote for my opponent in the first round of the 2010 h2h. But hey it was my first h2h. Im sure Trann will forgive me

My congrats to all those that competed. All were done in exceptional effort. I can just imagine how the rest of the comp will go. Considering this is my first experience with H2H, I will leave comments on round 2 though.

Another reminder... Round 2 entry deadline is only 20 hours away. Only 58 out of 128 are in. Don't forget to do yours today.

OK, n00b moment here. I didn't realize that you could comment on every entry. The regular contest interface displays a comment box, a vote button, and a comment button. The H2H displays the selection radio button, a comment box, and a submit vote button only - so it doesn't appear that you can leave a comment only.

So how does this work - once you vote for one entry you can go back and leave a comment for the other entry too? Does the "submit vote" button only submit a vote when the radio button is selected too? Or do folk just use the single comment box in the entry they vote for to comment on both entries? I did do that with a couple but stopped mostly because I wasn't sure how cool that was to do - does the losing entrant bother to read the winning entrant's comments, etc..

If you think I'm being dense, well I probably am... another story for another time.