WIP Illustration. Need crits
First off, thanks for taking the time to stop in. Ive been stuck on this Illustration for a while. It's still rough, but I just can't seem to get myself over the hurdle of suck toward the finish line of awesome. I was hoping that maybe some crits and help from the good folks of polycount could push me in the right direction.
My idea centers around a loose story of a girl who one day wanders into a desert town and takes up the mythological sword that resides there. In a seemingly trance-like state she strikes out across the desert. The towns folk, curious of her intentions follow her to find out where she is going with the sword and what she intends to do with it.
...or something like that. Anyhow, the whole piece right now is sort of a mess. I know there are tons of problems, but I'm not sure how to go about fixing many of them. I'm not opposed to striping it down and redoing everything either. I'm mainly looking for an exercise in story-telling through illustration and I want to translate my idea into 2d to the best of my abilities.
Any crits and thoughts will be much appreciated, and don't hold back!
My idea centers around a loose story of a girl who one day wanders into a desert town and takes up the mythological sword that resides there. In a seemingly trance-like state she strikes out across the desert. The towns folk, curious of her intentions follow her to find out where she is going with the sword and what she intends to do with it.
...or something like that. Anyhow, the whole piece right now is sort of a mess. I know there are tons of problems, but I'm not sure how to go about fixing many of them. I'm not opposed to striping it down and redoing everything either. I'm mainly looking for an exercise in story-telling through illustration and I want to translate my idea into 2d to the best of my abilities.
Any crits and thoughts will be much appreciated, and don't hold back!
Replies
Maybe cut the sun up a bit with some masking clouds?
Hope something helps you find the end of this project!
I agree with Stinkhorse's notes that the image is pretty heavy on the warm colors. At the moment you've got the girl painted as if there's a strong lightsource coming from her direct left side (more so in the face). In reality she would largely be in shadow given your lightsource, but for the sake of the painting I think you can mix the two with some adjustments to her rendering and usage of cooler colors. As I was fiddling with it I found this had the added benefit of bringing more focus to the sword, if the sword is left mostly warm, which is sort of cool.
I also think at the present the image is separated into 3 pretty stark levels - foreground (girl), middle ground (group of followers/onlookers), and the sunset background. I think the image could benefit from some meshing of the groups, more specifically with bringing one or two of the follower folks closer up to help bridge that gap. Again, making them cooler in color may help separate them from the background and help them feel more like they're part of the environment (I think I probably overdid the blues in my paintover, though, so far as the follower folks go).
Some clouds might be nice, as would perhaps the addition of some blowing sand/motion of the clothes on the follower group. Some footprints too, maybe. Just some more stuff to help make it feel alive and complete!
I like the image as it stands, would be cool to see additional work done on it. :thumbup:
@StinkHorse - You're 100% right about it being too yellow heavy. I've been struggling with the color balance since this piece began. Trying to figure out how to achieve a sunset in the desert palette but have it read as a successful composition has been tough for me. I'll try shifting some of those colors, and no I'm not against adding some more blue elements to the dress. I'll for sure try that!
Would there normally be clouds in an arid desert though? I need more desert sky ref!
@Two Listen - Great paintover, thanks so much! It really helps drive home what both of you are saying about color usage. I also agree, keeping the sword warmer does look cool.
Adding that extra person just a bit closer really made a big shift toward unifying the piece, great point.
I was considering pulling back the camera a bit so that you could see all of the girl, and put her closer to the people following her. Maybe that would help ground her in the scene better and eliminate some of the layer effect. Thoughts?
I would also like to give her skirt more dynamism, flowing in the breeze sot of stuff. I was thinking it would be cool to have some subsurface light from the sun shining through, but I'm not sure how to achieve the effect properly or how that should look. Any reference images or technique advice would be super helpful.
Anyhow, hopefully I'll have some time after work in the next few days to throw at this. Thanks so much for the help guys!
My experience has generally been that trying to fit a full, standing person into a "widescreen" painting is difficult to do if the focus is supposed to be on the person and some details about them (when you zoom out to a reasonable size and can view the whole image, the facial details really get lost, etc). Much easier to do if they're jumping/sitting/etc. Yeah you can do it, but usually then the intent is not who and what the person is - it's that there is a type of person there. Especially with the sword in her possession being a key part of this, and with how well you've done the face, I think trying to fit her whole body in there might detract from that aspect. I threw some footprints into my PO to try and help bring her into the same environment her followers were in, via suggestion of her past steps through the same place.
You're certainly welcome to give it a shot - just because I've had difficulty with it doesn't mean you will! But I think you may find then your image shifts away from that girl and that sword, and more about it being a girl, and a sword.
I think the piece is already reading better but it's nowhere near rock solid yet. I did end up pulling back the camera to bring more of the girl into the fame. Do you think I lose some of her interest by doing this or did I succeed in grounding her better?
Anyhow, would love some thoughts and crits. Cheers!
What else... The top of the girl's hood should be brilliantly white while her hair should be way more red. The sword should have some more blue in it's steel and the wrap around the hilt should be an eye catch too. carry the complimentary colors to her wrist bangles as well to help her arm pop.
All in all a great step forward man!
Awesome suggestions, I think more bounce light would really help define the shadowed side of her. Adding more color interest around the sword and that arm are also good ideas. I'm a bit hesitant to go too heavy handed with the blue but I think I might need to now that she's smaller on the canvas?
I'm aiming for more of a sandy Sahara type of desert, hence the robes and the camel in the background. Right now I don't know if I'm really communicating that properly, so any tips on how I can push that would be great.
More of a note to myself here, but there are a few areas I'm noticing that bother me so I thought I'd point them out and if anyone has any solutions feel free to throw them out there.
I think the perspective of the entire piece is off a bit, The horizon line seems too high up so I think i need to bring that down. I could be wrong though.
My hands sort of suck right now. In fact the anatomy of her hands and arms don't seem convincing to me and look too rigid. I did take reference photos for that pose but it's not translating well onto the canvas.
Lastly, the fold areas on the right side of her leg aren't resolving properly, especially from her knee up to her hip. Need to figure that out.
Thanks for the continued feedback and I apologize for my ramblings. Hope to have time to update again soon!
Been really busy over the holidays so I apologize for the lack of any update. Got some time tonight to sit down and make a small amount of progress.
Still feel like I'm struggling along a bit, but I figure there's nothing for it but to keep chipping away and taking any crits I get along the way.Cheers!
Let me know what you guys think. Any crits or feedback you guy want to throw at me would be much appreciated. Otherwise I'm just going to keep on doing my thing.
Thanks for stopping in!
There are still quite a few things I want to work on, but I think I'm getting to a place where I'm close to done.
Let me know what you think, and thanks for stopping in!
What's good:
The color and perspective is nice, setting the main focus (the woman holding the sword) and muting out the rest is emphasized by the color palette that you've chosen: Orange and Blue with brown undertones.
You've made good use in terms of the order of importance of the picture, the most important focus being the most detailed and the least important being the least detailed.
Continuity Errors:
While the top half of the woman holding the sword is spot on, the detail of the bottom half needs some retouching. From the direction the wind is in the foreground is blowing and the way you've set the lighting, the bottom half of the woman's clothes look less organic and more akin to a statue because of the intense contrast of the shadows you've put there. Try Softening the difference in value between the light and dark parts of the folds in the woman's clothing or disguise the detail by adding more sand in the foreground, that way the top half of the woman would look somewhat more in sync with her bottom half.
The angle in which the sunlight is cast on the woman seems off to me. You have the sun as the only light source but the angle in which the light hits the woman seems off as if the sun was farther right from the position you've placed it (or you have a secondary off-screen light source which seems like bs).
The Sword. From what I can see, the entire sword is composed of metallic components, but the way the light hits the cross guard and hilt bugs me. When light hits a metallic object, it casts a bright sheen of it's color when light hits the surface at a "sweet spot" angle and gives of a dull look at all other angles except for that sweet spot. In your picture I see you've implemented the sweet spot shading and highlighting (giving highlights at certain parts of the sword), but not all the way. the hilt and cross guard of the sword looks like it's viewed with a diffused light source above and in front of the sword when there's supposedly only one light source in the picture being the sun. I'm guessing you want to keep the sword's focus and detail at maximum so here's my suggestion: darken the mid-tone values of the hilt and cross guard while increasing the difference in contrast on the highlights and shadows of the sword.
The Blood splatter colors shouldn't be crimson red depending on the context. Depending on your intentions, when blood is outside of the body and exposed to air, it's color is the usual crimson red, but over time as blood dries up, oxidization will start turning the blood from red into a dark brown color akin to chocolate syrup, the color changing at the place where blood is the thinnest. If you want to show that the blood has been there for some time but still want to preserve the red tinge of fresh bloodstains, I would put some brown into the red at spots where you feel like the brown won't get in the way and darken the edges of bloodstains that you want to keep the red color in to keep with the realistic plausibility (if that's what you're going for).
Whew... That's a lot (and a bit nit-picky) to say from me, I hope this helps you out.
Thanks for taking the time to write all that up.
I agree with everything you've pointed out and now that I see them they should be easy fixes.
Regarding the dress, I was aiming for more of a heavy satin material, which is why I rendered it the way I did. I guess it either doesn't fit or I'm not pulling it off properly.
Thanks again for the feedback. Updating again soon I hope!
Not sure if I made progress or just botched it up.
Let me know what you think, and thanks for stopping in!
Highlights and edges are now so crisp and defined that it actually makes characters look flat.
A strong blueish highlight appeared on bottom of the hood even though the only blueish light source is inside of hood and not below it.
Also, it kinda looks like she has superbright LEDs in her eyes and necklace.
I dunno, maybe that's just some style that you're going for but for me the painting felt much more natural around this stage:
http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/k579/Hofsta15/14_zps3cad7b7d.png
http://i.imgur.com/oDUJsqs.jpg
It's true that some elements are starting to get a bit over worked, I might try to bring back some of that softness to a few of the edges to fix that.
Sometimes I just don't know when to quit on an illustration and I end up overdoing it. So I appreciate you guys calling me on it.
More updates soon!
Tried to incorporate some of the feedback, but I'm not sure how successful I was.
Thanks for giving my thread a look.
But that's just my 2cents. Great job incorporating all the feedback-- this "final" ended up great (so much more "epic" looking than the OP block out!), and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more from you.
So after some suggestions from a friend of mine I decided to rough out a quick change to try out a few things.
What do you guys think about increasing the obviousness of a magical force acting on the woman? And about moving the city closer in?
I roughed this out quick so I'm not attached to it, just interested in opinions of the possibilities in general and ways I could develop them.
As always thanks for checking out my thread.
I think this is the best version. The new one has too many changes to the point where it makes it into a new piece. This one has improved on the main issue I had with the initial post. Which was a lack of edge definitions. Overall you are not placing the figures on a unified plane properly. This can be tricky with what you have going as there is a dune and the plane is moving. Overall how to work on this issue is to do some perspective study. There are many tricks to getting proper perspective through. Aligning all the eye lines of the figures is one. The figures next to her hips look sunken in just a bit. Also soften edges on clouds.
One more thing, I would lighten the darkest value in the background a little bit more to give it more dept, hinting at atmospheric particles.
Very nice overall. Improvements from the original are great, nice job!
Still, great work! I recently finished an illustration where i tried to listen to all the crits and ended up spending WAY too much time, so i know the feeling of being sick of it. I'd fix the lighting issue, then move on. Everything can always be better, so one needs to set a limit for how much time you can allow yourself to spend on something
In earlier versions her face was much more in shadow, but it never looked good to me so I made a choice to introduce some bounce lighting to the unlit side of her. Looking back it doesn't make much sense though.
I've gotten to the point where I really appreciate the crits, but mainly in hindsight. I'm still conflicted about if I should keep at this till it's the piece I'm happy with or call it done and apply this expierience to something new.
I'm happy with the responses I got from this, but also disappointed that I feel the piece is still lacking something.
Oh well, that's art I guess.
I appreciate all the crits and feedback you guys have given me. It helped a ton.
I think I learned a lot while working on this piece and I hope to keep getting better!