Mike's 2D art improvement thread

praetus

I've been posting mainly in 3d on these forums but I want to get better at 2d.  I feel that I need to improve for two major reasons.

1) I enjoy doing hand painted textures so I think that doing more 2d work sill help with that
2) I need to become self reliant for creating concepts to work off of.  I was told a while back that places like Blizzard and other similar studios expect their 3d artists to be able to design props and other elements.

Here is what I have been working on lately.  It's a concept I came up with during the Throne Room contest and never completed so I picked it back up for now.  Looking to improves, so all comments/crits are welcome.  Super WiP at this point so hit it with anything.

chubbycat

I think you can push the idea of destruction further. At the moment it's feeling odd that one side of the room is destroyed, while the other side is completely unscathed. 

Consider construction a bit more and how stone can break. At the moment it's looking as if someone has just removed a few stone bricks from the wall, rather than time/deterioration/force has destroyed them. Also be careful about the large slab of stone jutting from the window. It has nothing to support its weight so it doesn't feel right.The window itself feels out of perspective. Though it has me wondering if the room is more round than square. If that is the case, I would try and add something to the left hand side of the room to show this and also fix up the floor in-between the pillars. 

In regards to the broken pillars, just be aware with the slicing/cuts of them. The pillar in the front right slants down left to right, so with that in mind, where would the pillar actually fall? Against the wall. 

Overall the design is really cool and I'm loving the throne and portrait above it. A lot of my crit has to do with the narrative of the scene, so feel free to dismiss all of it. I just thought I'd add my two cents to it

praetus

No, that is super helpful.  To be honest I have a bad habit of rushing into drawings without planning much.  I tend to get focused on details rather than the scene as a whole and I am trying to break that habit.  Taking a step back and forming a better narrative for the scene might help me with that.  It's a valid point.  I had done some work tonight but since it kind of goes against the point you made, I'll probably rework it a bit,  Thank you very much for your input.  =D

praetus

Trying to work in some of the destruction you had mentioned before.  I want to try and lean a broken pillar up against the wall in lower right as well.  See how it looks.  Still way more to try out.  I set it to grey for now on a separate layer so I could focus on form and values instead of jumping into color.  We'll see where this goes for now.  I am worried though with how long I should keep on this.  At what point are you just in pixel hell without improvement? 

praetus

Calling this one done for ow.  I'll start on something new tomorrow.

lotet

Great work, you really managed to capture the warcraft feel with this one. I think you could on some more dramatic lighting though, you have all these candles and those pillars and its a shame you dont use em for effect.

made a quick PO, hope u dont mind, added some atmospheric fog and some subtle shadowing and cast shadows from the pillars.

I kno u said ur done with this piece, but maybe something you can think about in the future.

praetus

Damn dude, that makes it look great.  I will never mind critique or paintovers.  I will definitely need to keep stuff like this in mind as I work on things.  I may go back and add some of these if I have time.  Getting ready for a vacation at the moment so we'll see.  Thank you for this @lotet

praetus

Here's a beholder drawing I made last week messing around as well as a new environment doodle.