heres a few of what I think are my best recent pieces, please let me know what im doing wrong and how I can improve. I'll be posting more here as my skills get better. Thanks for looking!
Hey man, welcome to the board. Really cool to see another Hi-Rez guy on here and I gotta say that I've been following your stuff via facebook for a long time. You're honestly a way better character guy than me but I can point out a few things that I see in a lot of your pieces that I think would push your stuff to the next level.
First, you're guys are extremely tidy. Even the predator seems to have freshly bathed. I know right now the industry seems to be super junky as a side effect of photobashing but I would take a peek at Wayne Reynolds to see how he adds a lot of history to his character by messing stuff up a bit. And that doesn't mean just grime collecting into the crevices of jewelry and such but also broke straps or cracks in leather and water stains.
Second, a lot of the time you pose your characters its like they are at a photoshoot and standing on a cloth backdrop. Part of the sale of the characters is that little bit of flavor that you could bring by just set dressing a touch. The Deadpool picture does this brilliantly. Brick backdrop with a coblestone floor and some slight graphic is all it took to make the piece a very stand out piece in your portfolio. The goblin for pathfinder is in the same boat. Some of the other backdrops are actually of such high contrast as to be distracting from the money shot and so I would use a lighten layer and get rid of some of the saturation and darks in one go.
Last, you're fantastic at characters but they are really busy as designs. I don't think you should tone that down at all but maybe in presentation you could do some call outs. This is only if you're trying to show more design and less illustration but I if they aren't just portrait pieces it could really help. Something like http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110810191415/lastexile/images/e/ee/Tatianaconcept55.JPG just really shows that you're thinking of the base character and the skin you're adding on top.
Freaking awesome stuff man and I love you and your teams work.
Replies
First, you're guys are extremely tidy. Even the predator seems to have freshly bathed. I know right now the industry seems to be super junky as a side effect of photobashing but I would take a peek at Wayne Reynolds to see how he adds a lot of history to his character by messing stuff up a bit. And that doesn't mean just grime collecting into the crevices of jewelry and such but also broke straps or cracks in leather and water stains.
Second, a lot of the time you pose your characters its like they are at a photoshoot and standing on a cloth backdrop. Part of the sale of the characters is that little bit of flavor that you could bring by just set dressing a touch. The Deadpool picture does this brilliantly. Brick backdrop with a coblestone floor and some slight graphic is all it took to make the piece a very stand out piece in your portfolio. The goblin for pathfinder is in the same boat. Some of the other backdrops are actually of such high contrast as to be distracting from the money shot and so I would use a lighten layer and get rid of some of the saturation and darks in one go.
Last, you're fantastic at characters but they are really busy as designs. I don't think you should tone that down at all but maybe in presentation you could do some call outs. This is only if you're trying to show more design and less illustration but I if they aren't just portrait pieces it could really help. Something like http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110810191415/lastexile/images/e/ee/Tatianaconcept55.JPG just really shows that you're thinking of the base character and the skin you're adding on top.
Freaking awesome stuff man and I love you and your teams work.