Art (Blizzard Contest Art) Mischief In Detlas- A Gingerbread House Creation

Oh boy, another quality art sent into the shadow realm by the contest judges. Guess it's time to reveal this artwork to the world if no one else will...

This artwork is titled "Mischief in Detlas" and is a tribute to my guildmates who helped make my Christmas the best it has been in a while. The artwork is a gingerbread house that re-creates a section of Detlas, with cookies of myself and my guildmates messing around. The final result was something amazing and I hope you feel the same way when viewing it.

The process took over a week to create, involving me making 2.5 batches of gingerbread dough, letting it sit overnight once made, rolling it out the next day and cutting many specific measured shapes, cooking those, and then letting those cool overnight. The building process was much more difficult than a typical gingerbread house, requiring me to pre-create the houses out of paper to ensure the dimensions and design would work.

The cookies were also another part of the design process, requiring me to draw out a template of each cookie by hand, cut it out and bake it, then cut a piece of pearl fondant to cover the cookie. Then, I used edible ink markers to redraw each design onto the cookie by hand, and add colors based on each guild members' skin.

Decorating took another 1-2 days as each house was decorated to look similar to the houses in winter Detlas the scene was based off of. Everything used was edible, whether it was candy, fondant, pretzels, or icing. After countless hours of creating, I placed the cookies into place in the scene and make the Detlas environment come to life.

The pictures are down below- yes, there are 8 of them, this artwork has a ton of detail in it that one picture doesn't do it justice. Feel free to comment or ask any questions below- I'd be happy to answer.










And judges...whoever you are...next time you do a contest, if you have no intention of picking anything but digital art, make that clear so me and other countless poor souls who took way more time to create something by hand don't get screwed over in the end. Thank you.

 

And this was beaten by extremely mediocre AI art. I have lost all faith in humanity.

 

The worst part is I jokingly gave myself a 5% chance to place, hoping things would change after the bonfire contest.

The fact that not only my joke prediction was right, despite everyone who saw it both in person and in my guild giving it mass praise, but a likely AI image actually placing when that took likely no effort to make over 24+ hours recreating Detlas in gingerbread is honestly sad.

 

This is fantastic! Very creative

 

i love it when amazing things like this get rejected in place of AI art that took about 2 seconds for some AI to generate that the "creator" of the art didn't even make

 

another banger by undyne

 

THIS IS FREAKING INSANE

 

wow
did you eat it all afterwards

 

How did this not place? You got cucked lol

I have encountered my fair share of questionable judges in various contests, but the digital art favouritism expressed here takes the cake

Whatever the rubric they are using to judge, either that needs to change, or they need to get new judges.

 

This is absolutely incredible, I hope the judges reevaluate how they choose contest winners because this undoubtedly deserved a spot.

 

Completely agree with you. This took over a week to make (even worked on this Christmas Eve) and likely clocked in around 30-40 hours total between the dough making, baking, assembling, and decorating. For this artwork as well as practically every traditional art submitted to get beat out by an AI artwork that had no effort or passion put into it, all that this has created is an uproar in the community, which is nothing like the Christmas spirit the contest was meant to represent...

I am not going to eat the artwork but rather display it for however long it will hold up. Currently, it is sitting up on display on the kitchen hutch, and looks quite nice.

I do not like making "blind" accusations but it honestly feels like there is a massive bias towards digital art when all forms on non-digital art not only failed to place, but also got beat by awful AI generated art. I personally want to see the rubric because I have participated in art contests in high school and the rubrics/judging they use ensures all mediums are judged equally. I let my distaste for this slide in the bonfire contest but after this, this needs to be addressed ASAP because the hero crates are likely my most desired crate and I'd at least like to know my non-digital idea will even stand a chance in the contest...

I really hope that something gets resolved by the festival of the heroes, because I saw so many really creative artworks just get shafted in favor of digital art. I already have a really cool idea in mind but why bother if they won't bat an eye towards it?

 

i want to eating it

 

(sigh) I really really really hate to be the guy but perhaps, at least from my perspective, one might not have seen the resemblance to Wynncraft? No hate whatsoever. I've never made a gingerbread. Your gingerbread HOUSES PLURAL look amazing and its clear you've worked tremendously long and hard to make it, even drawing characters. All I'm saying is, to me, it doesn't look like Detlas nor do I recognise any characters from Wynncraft (Ahsoka Tano is the only one I recognise from Star Wars)

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Welp 8 minutes have passed and I have finished going through forum notifications for today WHICH I DID IN DESCENDING ORDER OKAY I SAW THIS POST BEFORE I SAW THE WINNERS ANNOUNCEMENT



This is my formal apology to UndyneTheFallen

 

waht the fuck the thread was linked in wynn disc and it actually looks SO COOL??? huh??

 

looks great!

 

bangers

 

Undyne also made a stained glass sculpture for the bonfire festival and got beaten out of that by.... a board game?

I mean, the board game was really cool, but does it count as art? I think these contests really need separate categories

(the stained glass sculpture in question)

 

I did base the area on a section of Detlas, specifically this one with the frozen pond (the area where maxie and ava stand near):


I can understand what you mean since it's kind of hidden away from the center of Detlas and from first glance it doesn't appear to be wynncraft related, however I did link the above image in my entry so they could see what I was referencing with my artwork.

As for the characters, they were made based on my guildmates' skins so they don't exactly look like wynncraft characters from first glance. The artwork was a tribute to my guild, and I added them into the art to show appreciation for all they've done. Again, I specified this in the entry so the judges knew.

I don't really feel like this was the issue though when you consider this was still beat out by an AI artwork in the end, especially when the title is "Mischief in Detlas", the design of the houses look like wynncraft building styles, and references were shown to allow comparing of the two.

I actually liked the board game concept because it is a form of art that requires precision and balancing besides just design. I really thought the idea of converting the brand new bonfire minigame into a tabletop game was unique and original compared to the onslaught of look-alike digital art entries that surrounded it.

I more or less was upset at the lack of diversity of mediums in that contest, but held back any protest or further comment because technically it wasn't fully biased, at least not yet. After this contest though, I'm being vocal about this because even a board/tabletop game should be better than cheap AI generated art.

Plus, I put in 10 times the effort of the stained glass artwork for this one and to see the result of the contest end up worse than the last kind of disgusts me. Art has many mediums, not just photoshop...

 

holy shit this looks fucking incredible

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honestly, its somewhat concerning that art like this *can* be beaten by ai art
for some people, creative arts is literally their livelihood and the fact that to a non-artist, a prompt that took a few seconds to write can at ALL be seen as better than this is absolutely ridiculous and genuinely concerning for artists who rely on some form of recognition to make money
the fact that the ai art was an incomprehensible mess that i struggle to see as decent even if made by a human is also pretty sad, unless it was meant the broadest definition of abstract
but i know these are all arguments that people have said again and again, so i dont feel repeating them myself will make much change, just wanted to get how i feel about it out as someone who themselves does art too

 

I'd honestly just want to know how my art placed overall considering hams said there were 50-100 entries which isn't a lot compared to other competitions I've entered. I doubt that I even got in the top 10, let alone the 1st quartile of scores, which honestly concerns me and leaves me wondering if any idea I have can actually place in these contests. I feel like anything creative gets low scores but god forbid that every digital 2D art self-portrait gets some placement, even ones that are lacking to the point that others are actually questioning how I didn't even get top 5.

As I said prior, I really hope that this is resolved and re-evaluated in some way before the heroes festival because I already have a really cool idea in mind, but given it's a 3D art not on the computer I have no idea if it will even get enough points to come close to placing.

Again, thank you for supporting my artwork, as well as everyone else who has commented on this thread.