Evolution of a Challenge Entry

Inspired by @jmn blog on the subject. Lately, I see the challenge topic and I have two thoughts: First, what the heck? Second, how can I make something with such a narrow focus interesting and unique without being too far from what people expect. This is not an easy task. Sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not so much. The 'Human Chessboard' challenge was no different. I started trying to think of something different and interesting for the opposing sides. My first thought was fairies and trolls. Which resulted in the following image: As I'm looking at the image, some problems jump out that I want to change/fix. I don't like the diagonal layout of the board with the odd position of the pieces, and the background is vary closed off and boring. Made some adjustments and ended up with this image. Getting better but it's boring with the pieces lined up on opposing sides. Quick adjustment resulted in the following image: Since results are so unpredictable, I'm trying to not put too much time and effort into entries. I submitted with the caption 'A game of crowns and claws' and went to bed. By morning, my brain was realizing the challenge title was 'Human Chessboard' and perhaps this was stretching 'human' a bit too far into the fantasy realm and a new idea was born. Some minor adjustments here there and this image was created. I was tempted to change submission and be done, but the board still said fairy realm and the being in the sky was too far to back to be noticed or appear to be controlling the game. I had to sacrifice some of the background, but this was the final image: I swapped my submission and changed the caption to 'Heaven's Gambit'. At the time of writing, it's still undetermined when I might finish. I do peak in and see how I'm doing occasionally and voting is volatile. At one point, I wasn't sure I'd make top 10. A little later, it was looking like top 3. But now I'm back down again and still 7 hours to go. Will wait to post until voting ends so I can share results. For fun, here's some screenshots from along the way of my standings. I ended up finishing 4th in this challenge. Tough to know what voters will go for. As you can see, I had a nice win streak earlier today adding 20 wins to 7 losses, after that I went on a losing streak with 10 losses and no wins.