Some of them were pretty decent, but none of the original 15 fit into the design motif of Eve online. When the community had an uproar on one of the entries, which didn't meet technical specifications (and frankly was the worst), the judges took it down and put up a new 15th entry. The problem with this is that the 15th entry is an obvious appeasement. It was much better than any of the 15 previously posted and was cited multiple times by the people who were objecting as "the best one in the entire contest".
I am thinking that the the deviantArt people really had no idea what they were judging, from an in-universe view, and just picked what they thought were pretty, with total ignorance to what the game looked or felt like. Now that they've dug their grave, however, they have to lie in it - and the Eve people (and quite a few on deviantArt) are up in arms about it.