Not a fan of the shield to be honest. The shape language breaks completely with DK's default shape language. It ends up looking like you chose a random theme and slapped it onto DK without taking into consideration what makes out DK in terms of shape language, flow of the lines and color hotspots. All in all, it comes across as lazy design (not saying it is, nor is it an insult against you, I'm just stating that that's what it comes across as)
Not a fan of the shield to be honest. The shape language breaks completely with DK's default shape language. It ends up looking like you chose a random theme and slapped it onto DK without taking into consideration what makes out DK in terms of shape language, flow of the lines and color hotspots. All in all, it comes across as lazy design (not saying it is, nor is it an insult against you, I'm just stating that that's what it comes across as)
Thanks for your opinion. Do you dislike the shape of the shield - that it is round instead of a more 'triangular' one? As for colors they are straight from the DK palette. If you check out other shields you will notice that no other shield resembles the 'color hotspots' of the original.
I'm going to agree with Spudnik. I was watching this piece progress, and I thought from the get go that the silhouette seemed very out of place, but I haven't enough background knowledge of DK to be able to accurately call it.
With all of your visual information poured into the texture, the shape knowledge becomes crazy hard to identify, and this will cause the set as a whole to suffer. The best way to fix this, or notice the problem is just make everything flat black and compare other DK shields to your own. Straying too far from the basic silhouette definitions of a character will hurt the players quick identification, thus hindering the art.
As for the color, the hues match the general DK palette, but the way they are used doesn't match other DK items. There are harsh transitions from color zone to color zone usually outlined by some other vibrant color. The transitions you have currently are extremely soft and very painterly, which isn't a bad thing it just doesn't fit the DK preset.
I don't think the general idea should be scrapped however, and seeing a piece with the same references stylized to fit the DK character preset would be very awesome. Keep at it.
By the way, don't think that I'm picking on you here, I see this trend in a lot of the Chinese themed items where it's just taking the Chinese theme but not taking into consideration the character for which it's made. You always have to put the thing that you're making into the context of the character, not the other way around but instead, many of these chinese themed items attempt to put the character into the context of Chinese culture.
Ask yourself this: How is this shield a Dragon Knight shield? If I were to look at this concept without know what hero it was for, I would never guess it would be for DK. And that's the one thing that is important and needs to be clear. Where is the connection? Where's the flow of lines that dominates DK's design? So far, this looks like you saw a picture of that face somewhere and want to use it 1-to-1 without taking into consideration who it's for.
But my point is that this does not look like a dragon or something a Dragon Knight would wear. It looks like some mythical spirit or demon from an Asian culture. Look at the image where I outlined line flow again and you'll see how different the line flow from your designs is from the default DK.
Spudnik is trying to say that your shield doesn't fit DKs shape language and flow. Your shield is too soft and round and even the dragon face doesn't fit with DKs angular and pointy look. It's a nice idea to incorporate the Chinese theme but the execution just isn't working
Replies
Thanks for your opinion. Do you dislike the shape of the shield - that it is round instead of a more 'triangular' one? As for colors they are straight from the DK palette. If you check out other shields you will notice that no other shield resembles the 'color hotspots' of the original.
With all of your visual information poured into the texture, the shape knowledge becomes crazy hard to identify, and this will cause the set as a whole to suffer. The best way to fix this, or notice the problem is just make everything flat black and compare other DK shields to your own. Straying too far from the basic silhouette definitions of a character will hurt the players quick identification, thus hindering the art.
As for the color, the hues match the general DK palette, but the way they are used doesn't match other DK items. There are harsh transitions from color zone to color zone usually outlined by some other vibrant color. The transitions you have currently are extremely soft and very painterly, which isn't a bad thing it just doesn't fit the DK preset.
I don't think the general idea should be scrapped however, and seeing a piece with the same references stylized to fit the DK character preset would be very awesome. Keep at it.