Dark Monkelus wrote:I went through hell trying to decide what composition to go for, and after one sleepless night too many worrying about the contest being 99.9% full of depictions of Transformers firing randomly in to the distance deciding on something as far away from that as possible.
I can definitely appreciate that line of thought (doing something different from everyone else). But, IMHO the fact that it's supposed to be a Spotlight is a pretty good dictate of what approach to take. This is what my line of thinking probably would have been:
1. What are the spotlight character's main personality traits/hooks?
2. How would the character react to the other two characters in the prompt (and to a lesser extent, how would they react to him/her?)
3. Which of those traits/reactions is the most actiony/eye-catching?
Sureshot's a pretty easy character, I think... he's an arrogant ace marksman, something that naturally lends itself to some actiony poses. I think Daniel Fogarty handles this pretty well all around - we see Sureshot doing what he does best, with Streetwise just running in after chasing his target, only to be beaten to the punch by Sureshot's sharpshooting. Octane does sort of come off as "random Decepticon", but to be fair, Octane's own personality hook isn't exactly one that is very "static visual".
I just might have played up the arrogant part of Sureshot and had some fun with it. Streewise could be in robot mode, skidding to a stop as if he'd just been running pell-mell, with a confused and/or annoyed look on his face. Meanwhile, Sureshot's still shooting Octane, but he's standing in an almost relaxed pose, a bored/hoity-toity look on his face and one arm held palm out to Streetwise as if to say, "Appreciate the backup, but no worries, I've already got it well in hand."
Or something of that ilk. Every Transformer is unique, so if you take the chance to try and sell their specific angle, you shouldn't have to worry too much about getting stuck with all generic layouts.