Dominance War help

Snowfly

I'm wrapping up my entry for the 2D mini but working out the contrasts and color balance on my el cheapo Dell Ultrasharp is turning out to be a headache.

Could any one of you guys with a calibrated monitor try adjusting the levels on these to something that's reasonably balanced and let me know what kind of adjustments you made, to the contrast/levels/saturation/whatever?

While working on it, I could see detail in pretty every area of the painting, and mid saturation on the green background, the general's face, and the dog.

Thanks! Last minute nitpicks also welcome

Raw

Auto Contrast
Manual Adjustment + Overlay punchups

Medestruit

Your adjustment+overlay is really nice in busy areas, but it loses some of the depth in the bottom area. It all blends into black around the elbow of the dog, and you lose some of the detail you painted on the general's knee guard. So actually, I really don't know that your colors need to be adjusted at all, just maybe duplicate the painting and delete everything but the knee guard area and add an overlay to give it a little more pop instead of fading into black. I would probably include an overlay layer of your frame, it does the same fade to darkness and is hard to read the details at the bottom.

jerry

It's the same on my monitor, a bit dark on the bottom but i think thats intended. The auto contrast version does not seem that different to me but the manual adjustments version isn't great either. It does add some nice "pop" but it's too much. Take maybe 50% of that and what you have now and i think you're golden. GL.

renderhjs

The font typo is imo. bad,- no one uses written captitals with a regular font (it looks to me as if the characters were not designed that way),- either its in the font set where the smal caps(minuscule) are often a bit shorter as the beginnging characters. Some font suggestions:
Trajan
http://www.linotype.com/1547/trajan-family.html
freeware version:
http://www.dafont.com/optimusprinceps.font

Personally I think the background is not working,- the light grey does not stand in good contrast with the middle of the character (almost same tone). Also some lousy brush strokes are more visible at the top on the background - it looks speed painted there - maybe that is because of the high contrast because of the light grey shade.

good luck

low odor

looks good...I think the shape of the dog is getting lost a bit..could be my crappy monitor though...great work man

Snowfly

thanks for having a look ... as painted, very little of the image goes to full black, and none of the dog should be obscured. thanks for the solutions, i'm zeroing in on something that works

render- yup i had a second look at the background after some rest and i agree, it's way too loose. already started giving it more sharpness and volume. thanks for pointing me to those fonts, they're a lot more stylized and closer to what i had in mind. cheers

toren3d

Looks very nice! I would say you have the dark areas nailed, but I think you just need to make the brights, brighter. Perhaps, paint in more bright colors, to add the contrast as opposed to using levels (as that would affect everything as a whole, and I don't think you should change the darker areas)