Flower Girl Meets Tree Ent Scene.
polycounter lvl 6
I'm creating a hand painted mini scene as a portfolio piece. I've tried all different styles of art and hand painting is the one I enjoy most, so I'm putting my focus on it to improve my coloring and lighting. I've been working on becoming an environment artist, but I still have a passion for character work so I'm going to combine both disciplines to create a simple story telling scene.
I've already been working on this and here's what I have so far. Any level of advice/critiques/thoughts/comments from beginner to professional will be greatly appreciated, it's always good to have fresh set of eyes.
I created some rough concepts of the scene layout and possible textures that I will be making.
Initial concept of the girl, I later looked up Disney style proportions and incorporated it into my character.
Next up is the tree ent.
============================= Current Progress =============================
I've already been working on this and here's what I have so far. Any level of advice/critiques/thoughts/comments from beginner to professional will be greatly appreciated, it's always good to have fresh set of eyes.
I created some rough concepts of the scene layout and possible textures that I will be making.
Initial concept of the girl, I later looked up Disney style proportions and incorporated it into my character.
Next up is the tree ent.
============================= Current Progress =============================
Replies
as much as it's tempting to try to shade particular areas, try to resist... use large sweeping shades (almost like ambient occlusion) on the skin, rather than focusing on specifics. by focusing on areas like the ankles, eyes, and nasolabial folds, you're making her look really old.
in terms of the sculpt itself, try to be less definitive of muscle groups, the neck for example looks like the neck of a woman in her thirties who hits the gym all the time but has loose skin around the tought muscle. her neck would look better almost as just a cylinder. smooth out the nose a little, there's a weird "pig nose" bump going on.
her eyes could benefit from the slight oval shape in the concept, it reads better in general.
Her feet look very sharp and angular, especially around the ankles. I'd recommend softening and smoothing them.
You might replace the thick blue trim under her bodice with a ribbon & bow, placing the bow in either front or back. This would also let you play a bit with materials - cotton for the dress & satin for the ribbons.
You might want to do a few simple color swaps to try out different dress & hair colors in the scene.
The tree might look better with generally upward-tilting branches. The hole at the top of the trunk feels rather forced. A bird nest might serve as an interesting accent, possibly even a hat of sorts.
almighty_gir: I did have trouble keeping her looking young. I'll try the bigger sweeping shades and smooth some forms out.
Dwalker: Will definitely have thinner eyelashes for the low poly, most likely alphas. I'll fix the feet as well as soften a lot of the defined areas as gir also suggested. I like the ribbon idea, going to add that on the next fix. I'll try drawing more iterations of the tree.
Softened forms and got rid of detailed shading that made her appear old.
Couple of color variations, I wanted colors that would not get lost into the green grassy environment.
Played around with some ideas for the tree.
I kind of like the two trees version, like a yin and yang. One tree has a positive attitude and rounded shapes vs the sharper and grumpy face of the other.
I was also thinking of getting rid of those bulky shoulders to make her appear more mobile and less formal. Maybe emphasize more on dress pattern designs.
The girl looks much better.
I loved the first tree, looking forward to see how you'll do it.
Is the tree a wise adviser, old and tired, or embittered? His personality will - at least to an extent - dictate his appearance. Decide on one, and you'll have the other.
Personally, I rather liked the puffy sleeves, but, again, it depends on the story. Is she a girly-girl, an adventurous tom-boy, or a good student? This might also dictate her appearance - is she spotlessly clean, or does she have a smudge of dirt on a cheek, or some grass stains on her knees? Also, consider accessories - books held by a strap, flowers...
I think the pink/red or blue/blue are probably the better options, but the yellow/blue also works well.
I agree
The wise old tree spirit has been secluded from humans for a very long time and upon seeing the girl it is delighted by her presence. The tree spirit has a past association with humans from "the dark times." It holds no grudge of the past but is well aware of the good and evil capabilities of man. It has lived for a very long time fulfilling its "duty", but its life is soon coming to an end and the secrets inside of it will be unleashed into the new world.
Hard to decide which colors to pick I think no 3 looks pretty attractive as well, but I think I've decided to go with the pink and red because it complements with the very green environment.
I'm actually a dude, haha. But you're right There are a ton of great female hand painted styled artists that frequent here that have inspired me with their work, Faf and Jessica Dinh come to mind.
Here are some more concepts for the tree spirit.
I was going to extend my idea to two trees but I think I should stay on course with my initial idea of one tree. I always have new ideas floating around in my head and I end up never staying on track. However I do need to show an element of evil somehow... I might just sculpt some evil faces to its sides... tree spirit, warden of evil.
I think the sense of evil would be better from the background than the tree. Perhaps the tree & glade (from the original concept) are in bright sunshine, while it is surrounded by a dark and foreboding environment. Perhaps it's a bright clearing surrounded by a somewhat sinister forest. Even a spooky shadow being cast from off-screen and approaching the girl could work, but that seems rather dark.
I totally like that surrounded by darkness idea, I may try experimenting with it. My project is getting darker than I intended, but all the more interesting.
Rough shape of the tree spirit so far. I'm still thinking about how I'm going to texture this thing. The conventional method for trees are just tiled textures, but I'm treating this as a character. So I'll probably do a combination of both unique texture for the major areas and tiled recycled textures for the twigs and leaves.
Neox: I'm not too sure I nailed your critique well enough but here it is. The changes are very subtle, but I hope I fixed the issues. I made her upper lip appear stretched horizontally. I made her nasolabial fold more apparent, gave her cheeks more volume and lower eye lids raised slightly.
Thanks for the crits again! It's helping a ton.
Will sculpt leaf and modular branches next
Notice that the branches are mostly smooth, with only the occasional knot or gall.
I'm not saying that you can't create your own tree species, but just as stylized humans are based on human anatomy, stylized trees should be based on arboreal anatomy. (Sorry... couldn't resist the alliteration. :P)
jhoythottle: Thanks, hopefully I can keep focused and actually finish! Working on it bit by bit.
You might also consider them having contributing directly to the face rather than merely serving as ornamentation. They'd make excellent eyebrows.
Great progress!
Pixelpatron: Fixed some symmetry issues as well as add more details. At first I was planning to mirror the textures over and add props to break symmetry to save texture space, but decided that it'll be more interesting if I just focused on aesthetics and instead worry about the technical side after.
Retopologized the tree spirit and mushroom (not as clean as I'd hope, but getting better at it.). I modeled some branches, as well as baked down the leaves I sculpted. I used my xNormal AO bakes as a guide for painting. I jumped back and forth between 3D Coat and Photoshop for texturing.
Next on the list is the grass and ground.
Critique and comments very appreciated, thanks.
My grass so far, hand painted from scratch.
I also think it looks really good, that the roots are less detailed and darker then the rest. It emphasizes the part above them, which should have the main focus, right!?
Orb, awesome tip. I added that green channel lighting information to the treespirit texture and it does help pop out its features more. This'll be useful on tiling texture sculpts if I go the sculpting route.
Started the full scene blockout and rock sculpt.
Needs some more props, color tweaking, texture/tile resizing.
You're doing a nice job with the textures but "personally" I would like to see a little variation just to break it up a bit. Something simple, like maybe taking a grungy image off of cgtextures, blurring it, and playing with the overlay modes and opacity. Just my 2 cents.
That being said it looks really awesome and I can't wait to see then final result!
Looking forward to see more!
I decided to stick with Marmoset, added a light source now vs the unlit mode I used before. Hopefully the placement looks ok.
Bolovorix, I agree with the variation. Tried what you mentioned with brush strokes. Something I need to continually work on.
Thanks for the positive feedback TomGT, Tits.
It's a little nitpicky, and I could be wrong though.
would love to see some "in-scene" renders i think it will be an overall great piece when done!
skodone, I lowered the brightness of everything else except the focal point as you pointed out. Thanks for the comment, the composition is looking more balanced now.
for the glowflies, simple cubes with an emissive material scattered randomly in the for and backgrounds, the depth of field on the camera would cause them to blur out in really cool ways.
would give the tree a very nice definition i think
jettly218, thanks I'm trying to improve my texturing the most so thats good to hear.
skodone, I tried to add that bit of shadow on that lump you mentioned, since I am experimenting with a night scene now I can add some rim lighting to help bring out the form more.
I decided to add normal maps to the tree spirit and rocks considering I'll be adding more light sources now.
Experimental shot.
Overview of layout.
The alphas for sure have been giving me problems. The glowflies appear a bit grainy on the edges, but I guess the depth of field will kind of mask that away.
Looking at it again, maybe I can create a darker sky with stars. Add more polygons to the cloud plane so it doesn't appear so straight.
Thanks for the crits everyone.