Best Of

Didn't do the last one because none of the prompts really stuck out to me. This time they all do 😭

Hello!
Been a lurker here, so finally decided to hop in and try to do the monthly challenge I've been learning Unreal and Substance Designer, and taking a bunch of environment art courses on gumroad and udemy. So, I wanted to test myself by creating something on my own rather than just blindly following tutorials. So far, I've made a rough blockout out of basic shapes and tried to match the camera to the concept 

Very nice concepts! Tempted to do the hard surface env, I think the scene lends itself so a lot can be achieved by playing with lighting.

EtotheRic said:

I've been trying to add some animation and life to things rather than just still images. I am no animator but hope to improve.

Good initiative getting it in Sketchfab, nice work!

Hey everyone, just finished my first project with Arnold, happy with the results, take a look ! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0lLQD4

Just quickly, and I'm not sure if I'm very good at explaining this:
The "after" variant looks already a bit better, but still has the same underlying problem that's also visible in the latest exercise. It's a good idea to blur the source, but especially with your blue lines, you almost seem to follow a kind of "2D" edge finding approach and outline forms that often aren't really there (at least to this extent) or are parts of tertiary details (minor surface bumps and dents) or much more subtle. And those resulting shapes still sit a bit next to each other on the final mesh.

To put it negatively, it looks a bit like useung a turbulence noise in 3ds max (http://www.neilblevins.com/art_lessons/turbulence/turb_max.jpg) as a bump and I feel partly responsible for that since that's basically the curvature I am suggesting, but it can be much softer for the most part and more subtle in places, and the shapes themselves need to feel less random (in their directionality) and regular. I'm exaggerating, of course, but I hope it helps to get the point across. E.g. if you simply smudged/blurred some of your details and the shapes that have basically an outline going around them, this would probably look better already.

Perhaps you could try to really ignore the tertiary details (blurring alone can't fully accomplish that) for a further exercise and try to find the defining secondary shapes and perhaps try to analyze which shapes the muscles under the skin would have.
And then some of the more random details you are seeing right now will come back organically and more naturally looking once you do your tertiary layer.

Hello there! Looking nice!
I wonder if her shoulders/chest area is too wide on X-axis (compared to concept)? In the same vein, the boots seem a bit too small.
Maybe it can benefit from exaggerating the contrast between her narrow silhouette and big boots?

Looking forward to following your progress

I could look at this all day! Really enjoying the small details, like the cloth pilling