Obscura's hand painting improvement thread

Obscura

Hey guys!
So recently I started practicing hand painting again. I already posted a few results here and there, but I wanted to have them in one place so here is the thread for it. I would like to get feedback, opinions, suggestions here.

Here are the 3 most recent tries.

1. Book(Concept by Jasper Joris)
Concept:
https://jasperjoris.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/8347c3gpthyg1400201643809.jpg
My attempt:


2. Sword(concept by Rafael Zanchetin):
Concept:
http://orig08.deviantart.net/c7c1/f/2015/224/a/f/batch1_by_rzanchetin-d95f6u8.png
My attempt:


3. Tileable stone brick texture:
I didnt have a specific concept for this, I was following various screenshots from WoW.



And... For comparison, here is a scene that I made for practicing hand painting, at the end of 2013:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129297&page=2
After this scene, I stopped making completely hand painted textures, until now.

Obscura

I just uploaded the sword and the book to Sketchfab so now they can be viewed in 3d.
[SKETCHFAB]eb8ff0f50d4f467eb8c571bed244e011[/SKETCHFAB]
[SKETCHFAB]6d4b0d3dd7ba4b8e80104348d8dd4b30[/SKETCHFAB]

Kid.in.the.Dark

that book is cuuuuute, great work so far... here's my critiques~

The values on your book metal material could go to a bit more extreme contrasts... that way it will sell the metal feel better as right now it's looking a little flat e.g.



The book binder section itself I think could do with 2 metal bolts like the corners of the cover instead of a wooden bind section as well.. it would break up that negative brown space a bit more and add more eye candy for the viewer.

keep going (Y)

ROBBOsulsu

Awesome pieces of work, my only critic to say really would be watch your textures. Remember when you were a child and you were told not to go over the lines, in this situation it's kinda like that. With your book not so much, but when looking at the sword it's rather visible in places, and you immediately know it's not supposed to be like that. Other than that though, it's a good piece of work, you're making great leeway.

Obscura

Great feedback guys, thanks for the input:thumbup:. I'll try to implement them on the next pieces. They are coming really soon.

Obscura

I made some snail cake wood beams lol.


Also I made some adjustments on the brick texture

QOR_082

It looks really nice. Lo Poly art. Did you use Photoshop?

switz

Love the sword. The stone looks a bit flat/monochrome, maybe try bringing some slight cooler colors to the cracks?

Also try running the Unsharp Mask filter; crisps up the edges and makes everything look less "fuzzy".

Gazu

Love the Book!
But yeah, make the Metal more Shiny