Hasta La Gadget!

Last February Blizzard and deviantART held a Diablo III: Reaper of Souls fan art contest. The winners of the contest have now been announced. Diablo III Art Director Christian Lichtner had the honor of picking the winners. He chose Kuzinskiy Andrey and his barbarian-centered piece New Evil as the grand prize winner.

deviantART member TheRafa bagged second place. In Among the Dead, TheRafa featured the new Crusader class about to engage the Reaper of Souls himself, Angel of Death Malthael.

Yong Jun Cho aka nixell won third place with his badass Monk art, Fist of Conviction. This is actually my favorite among the three.

Congratulations to all the winners! You deserve your epic loot. Use this waypoint to deviantART to check out what Christian had to say about each winning artwork, and be sure to admire them in their full resolution on their respective artists’ pages. I highly recommend looking at the other submissions as well.

Before its Diablo III art contest, DeviantART also held a competition for another major video game – Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. The contest called for the art community’s members to show their own take on the heroine Lightning. The entries were judged by none other than Square Enix’ artist, designer and director Tetsuya Nomura.

The contest was held last month, from February 11 to February 20. Out of the 4,655 submissions, Nomura – known for his character designs for Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII, X and XIII and the Kingdom Hearts series – chose three grand prize winners.

Below is Nicolas Barge’s winning piece, of which Nomura said, “At first glance it looks like a CG, and it has a level of quality that makes it look like it was captured as a screenshot.  While there were many heroic costumes for Lightning, I was drawn to the femininity of this costume and her hairstyle.”

Nomura was also impressed by Randis Albion’s piece, saying, “It’s wonderful as an illustration, but in addition to that, the artist drew in both the front and back views, so I felt the artist’s clear intent when they created this piece. The red and blue color scheme was very beautiful, too.”

Marga Donaire’s submission is one of my favorites among all of the entries, and it sounded like Nomura felt the same way too: “With one look I was hooked. The costume itself is sophisticated, and it’s also very well done as an illustration. The background that reminded me of the Japanese flag (Hinomaru) matched well with the piece and was beautiful.  As an artist, when I look at different works of art, I think to myself “If it were up to me, I would do it differently,” but that thought didn’t cross my mind once when I saw this picture.”

As if earning praise from such an accomplished artist wasn’t enough, Nicolas, Randis and Marga also won an original sketch from Tetsuya Nomura, a custom Xbox 360 and controller, $1000, a keychain, a shirt, and copies of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. They were also featured on the front page of deviantART. Congrats guys! Switch to your browser costume and head to deviantART to check out all of the entries.

Dragons are awesome. And there are no better creatures to protect your dice between use. Dragons instinctively guard dice as if they were 20-sided eggs. It’s just the way they are. DeviantArtist DragonsAndBeasties knows this and so has created the cutest way to keep your dice organized.

She created these detailed little dragons in all kinds of colors and styles to hold your dice. She also has several other dragons, ponies and creatures in her collection. This should help her spice up her next Dungeons and Dragons session.

Plus, they can double as miniatures depending on the game that you are playing. These dragons are all win.

[via Nerd Approved]

The heroes of science. They have changed our world. Did they make it a better place? Sometimes. Not the guys who invented the atomic bomb so much. In general though, these eggheads have bettered our world. It’s time to add them to our toy collections. Even though your G.I. Joes and Star Wars figures will totally kick their butt and take their lunch money.

These conceptual action figures are based on famous physicists, mathematicians, chemists, and other scientists by DeviantARTist datazoid. Sure Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Feynman might make for some pretty boring toys since they only battle with their minds instead of their fists, but so does Professor X. And he’s a badass.

They each took between 40 minutes and 2 hours each to create. They are all based on Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: DS9 figures (mostly Odo from DS9, and Picard as Dixon Hill from TNG). Then he modified them in Photoshop.

[via Geekologie]

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m sort of obsessed with Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. I just can’t get enough of the sweeping wind patterns that are prevalent in this piece of incredible art. This is one of the reasons why I’m always happy to find recreations, tributes, and reinterpretations of one of Van Gogh’s most beautiful pieces. Noah Gibbs, also known as ~SirNosh, is behind this amazing homage to The Starry Night.

It depicts what would happen if van Gogh had a bad case of Pac-Man fever. The result of his homage is pretty cool, and I like all of the details he incorporated into it – especially the swirling ghost-clouds in the middle. This should definitely be made available as prints, laptop vinyl decals, and iPhone cases. I think he’d sell quite a few.

I just hope that Noah didn’t cut off his own ear to make this.

[via DeviantArt]