Ahah! Now, that's the spirit! First, I would like to thank you all for participating. I'm finishing up a web design project of my own, at the moment. I'm finally able to get back to review, in detail, what has been done here.
I can't believe how hard this is to judge, as I truly love everyone's work. Careful thought was put into each one. Although other items may have been put into the scenes to help enhance the subject of focus, the subject of the contest was/were the cigar(s). I hope you had fun working on this one, as did I.
In the end, only one can win. That winner stood out the most by thoughtful approach to texturing, lighting, and how the cigar would look at the stage of it's use. By this, I mean that the cigar was obviously in use, as there were burn marks around the edges of the outer wrapping, the smoke tint was spot on for the lighting of the scene, and the outer wrapping was cleanly applied to the curvature of the object.
Again, I liked each one of these, but the winner of this challenge is Frank.
Congratulations, Frank...on a job well done! Treat yourself to a cigar, if you smoke. If you don't, have a bubblegum cigar instead. I'll post your image on my site along with credit to you for your work. I look forward to throwing another challenge soon.
Feel free to visit
www.cgvertx.com to see Frank's submission.