Its pretty rad dude- only crit I have is your relying too much on your line work, and its creating dark's that are too over bearing.
for example- the back of the dragon. granted it would be darker than the sky behind it, its still falling into shadow- the way you have the light source placed, that *should* make the dragons skin a much lighter value along that rim no?
It's pretty cool. Like konstruct said you could push some highlights.
Like the front knee could have a little light hitting it. And elbow and hand, that part just gets too dark, and front of the wing, make those pop a bit more.
I like the hard edged look too though, I just think the bottom/front of the dragon darkens and blends into the rock a bit too much.
Sweet painting - I like the mood and the rendering is really nice.
Everything is very similar value-wise on the dragon, so the leg/arm area sort of becomes a jumbled mess of musculature - initially very hard to seperate which bits are in front of others. Sort of the same with the horns, but not as bad.
Also, the wing flesh on the far right reads straight into the normal skin, so it's a bit awkward to look at. maybe some reddish tinting to help it seperate.
The dragon is far better in terms of detail and artistic attention than the rider. I would definitely work on the rider a lot more, to give it visual style/flair that the dragon already has. For example; the face of the rider reads as generic and frozen whereas the Dragon has quite a lot of character in it's pose, it's musculature, and facial expression.
it's great man, really. but the front shoulders need to be lower (on the picture) or closer to the front of the dragon, further away from the wings. right now the arm is going to seriously mess around with the extra pectoral they need for flying. you can even see it in your painting where it looks like it would be forcing the pec to tense itself.
Thanks everyone for the crits. I was really looking for ways to push this image a little more and I think I got some great suggestions. I will do an update when I get the time.
papagersi: I think it would be fun to do a 3D model, but I probably won't be doing one any time soon
I dig this, man. The girl needs some more love, though -- the face, chest (collarbones, pectoral, connection of her left shoulder) and arm could all use some attention.
Also, why's the blade ontop of the lance? Looks unbalanced, bottom seems more natural.. Lance also seems way too short to be practical in any circumstances i can envision.
Hey, nice work! I'm really happy that you found it useful. I think it is usually hard to get much out of a tutorial (since drawing is based so much on practice), but I tried to mention things I thought were useful to keep in mind.
Yeah, working at your final resolution results in some weird behavior from the brush and pixels that are really hard to work around. I think it's a good idea to do everything in at least twice you final intended resolution. Also, it good to have the super huge size in case you decide you want to print it out or something
The "wing arm" of the dragon, however, I dont like that much. There's something about the way it is attached to the lower part of the body that makes it almost look grown in place and unable to move much. Hope that makes sense.
daaaang, I didn't even realize til someone said that the lance is a gun, that's awesome! The girl reminds me of Lilith from Borderlands =] so was the video you posted the same video you said you were working on? Cause if it isn't, I can't wait to see the real one!
this is really cool, it reminds me of keith parkinson's (r.i.p.) paintings.
his style is closer to urs, in way, as its more graphic and less volumetric, but i think paying attention to the volumes and how the light source hits them may help u produce a more economic and realistic painting at the end.
Only after making this PO i saw the video - u do work ur rendering flat-on and then apply an atmospheric background, while ur foreground remains graphic. It's conflicting. The fact u color greyscale doesn't help carry the light across the scene correctly either, further detaching ur foreground from the background. The holistic way would be, after establishing ur drawing, to work out ur atmosphere with colors and then fill the foreground with the correct ones, THEN adding values uniformly across the img. Don't rush into the cool stuff.... have patience.
In this crappy PO i tried
- removing those dark edges with general atmospheric cyan color
- adding the rim light
- shading the dragon, somewhat as a whole, which puts a lot of details in the shadow but.... listen to ur own advice here - render where the light goes.
- forming a "soft spotlight" in the foreground that adds the local yellow/orange light. its not very well formed, esp volume-wise, but maybe helps paint a clearer picture. Highlights become more yellow (or less cyan/green, for the matter) and not white, as that just flattens that img.
Mullins is an excellent reference for what I tried to explain. Hope this helps somewhat... n sorry if it's a rip!
Thanks for the paintover Shotgun! Those are some great crits. I need to find some time to take another pass on the image because I think it could be improved a lot.
Replies
Seems like that gun lance could do some serious damage to another dragon
for example- the back of the dragon. granted it would be darker than the sky behind it, its still falling into shadow- the way you have the light source placed, that *should* make the dragons skin a much lighter value along that rim no?
Like the front knee could have a little light hitting it. And elbow and hand, that part just gets too dark, and front of the wing, make those pop a bit more.
I like the hard edged look too though, I just think the bottom/front of the dragon darkens and blends into the rock a bit too much.
Everything is very similar value-wise on the dragon, so the leg/arm area sort of becomes a jumbled mess of musculature - initially very hard to seperate which bits are in front of others. Sort of the same with the horns, but not as bad.
Also, the wing flesh on the far right reads straight into the normal skin, so it's a bit awkward to look at. maybe some reddish tinting to help it seperate.
papagersi: I think it would be fun to do a 3D model, but I probably won't be doing one any time soon
Also, why's the blade ontop of the lance? Looks unbalanced, bottom seems more natural.. Lance also seems way too short to be practical in any circumstances i can envision.
[ame]
What res did you paint this at?
That would explain the different results I get when I try to recreate paintings. Go figure.
By the way after watching your video heres what I made lol:http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7334/dragoncv.jpg Probably the best thing ive ever painted haha
Yeah, working at your final resolution results in some weird behavior from the brush and pixels that are really hard to work around. I think it's a good idea to do everything in at least twice you final intended resolution. Also, it good to have the super huge size in case you decide you want to print it out or something
The "wing arm" of the dragon, however, I dont like that much. There's something about the way it is attached to the lower part of the body that makes it almost look grown in place and unable to move much. Hope that makes sense.
his style is closer to urs, in way, as its more graphic and less volumetric, but i think paying attention to the volumes and how the light source hits them may help u produce a more economic and realistic painting at the end.
Only after making this PO i saw the video - u do work ur rendering flat-on and then apply an atmospheric background, while ur foreground remains graphic. It's conflicting. The fact u color greyscale doesn't help carry the light across the scene correctly either, further detaching ur foreground from the background. The holistic way would be, after establishing ur drawing, to work out ur atmosphere with colors and then fill the foreground with the correct ones, THEN adding values uniformly across the img. Don't rush into the cool stuff.... have patience.
In this crappy PO i tried
- removing those dark edges with general atmospheric cyan color
- adding the rim light
- shading the dragon, somewhat as a whole, which puts a lot of details in the shadow but.... listen to ur own advice here
- forming a "soft spotlight" in the foreground that adds the local yellow/orange light. its not very well formed, esp volume-wise, but maybe helps paint a clearer picture. Highlights become more yellow (or less cyan/green, for the matter) and not white, as that just flattens that img.
Mullins is an excellent reference for what I tried to explain. Hope this helps somewhat... n sorry if it's a rip!
I also fixed the GIF's last frame... sorry bout that.
Yup-- working on an update right this moment actually! I also do all the in-game assets.