Bison Concept [Critique please]
polycounter lvl 3
Hello, I have made this concept following a tutorial from Alex Kosakowski. It is inspired by bison
I hope your critiques in order to improve with your advice and experience.
Do not be afraid to be tough
I hope you like it
Un saludo
I hope your critiques in order to improve with your advice and experience.
Do not be afraid to be tough
I hope you like it
Un saludo
Replies
Try to tackle a subject at a time, really study it and then try to do a small personal piece to apply the newly aquired knowledge!
You're right,I try something bigger than that now I can do.
I will work in smaller pieces to improve.
My suggestion would be to think more about the lighting and shadows on the final. I personally prefer the second image and think the yellow light and the highlights and tonal changes are not well handled nor necessary.
As a character concept I think the second works fine: the drawing is easy to understand and the lighting is straightforward and accurate.
Perhaps you wanted the final to feel more like an "illustration," but in this case I don't think it was necessary.
The first is perspective. The character isn't really sitting in space very well. You can see the top of his feet, the bottom of his hands, the inside of the pendent on his chest and the top of his heads. Basically this means that the horizon line shifts multiple times as it goes up the character and you're drawing what you think you should see, instead of what you would be able to see in the camera. The best way to fix this problem would be to break down the guy you want to draw into basic shapes like cylinders, cubes and spheres and put those into one camera before you try to draw the silhouette over it.
Second is anatomy. The human brain is extremely extremely good at picking up human forms and we can tell instantly if something is beyond the realm of plausible or healthy instantly. What you have going on here is what we call "man in a suite" style of anthropomorphic character. Basically the character could just be some burly power lifter with a bison mask on and that actually hurts you a lot because we're expecting all the forms to be anatomically accurate to a human then. The human forms not sitting in the correct perspective and without more exaggeration just feel really forced. I would first gather reference of bison and maybe do a quick study of how their legs work and where their head sits on the spine (they have a different sort of "neck" than we do). Then I would try and find how other designers (disney, warhammer, blizzard) have solved the anthropomorphism and see if any of their solutions are similar to what you would want for this guy.
Third, your armor looks very "made up." The catch with being a good concept artist is you must first know how things work, and then imagine something cooler. Imagine you approach a kid who has just learned how to read and write and you ask him to write a story for a cartoon. You're probably going to get a very simple story without any sort of structure or entertainment value outside of maybe what he can apply from his recollection of the cartoons he recently watched. Same thing with being a concept art who doesn't have the knowledge of what he is working on and isn't using reference. You're design solution will seem very simple and derivative off of some games you just played or movies you've watched. Find some real armor that looks interesting and try to understand how its fitting on the character and what purpose it has. I also recommend looking up a specific theme like "Pax Romana Centurion" or "Chinese Warrior with Repeating Crossbow". The more specific you become the better your reference on pintrest.
Last, because you don't need to be overloaded with bulletpoint improvement suggestions, don't render the first piece you draw. Sketch around a bit, post a picture, receive feedback, apply it to the design again. Drawing is the language of design, the rendering is for communicating to none designers. Painting is not something you're strong at yet and almost anyone here will be able to pick apart your values being muddy, your lighting across forms being uneven, the tangent with the belt and the sword causing conflcit, etc, etc, and those are important later on, but if you're trying to do design, you have to have something to say first. There are plenty of guys on this forum who can paint extremely well, some of them can even design, and they can pick apart your rendering really well, but thats all you'll get normally because it really is the fastest thing to key onto.
Hope that helps and if you need anything hit me up.
Thanks for investing your time in helping me improve. I really appreciate that.
Your comment has been very constructive and very helpful. I'm sure it will help me improve.
You really have made me see you're right in everything you say. Will put into practice your advice on my next project.
Thank you very much
A greeting
Imo, for future works, try building the figure from blocks of form and paint, rather than color in the lineart. Lineart tends to be a bit flatish if you're not accustomed to make it feel full of volume, so it could create problems later on.
If you build from form, you'd get better lighting and understanding of parts and objects as they relate to each other.