One thing I'd look at is that you've made a tangent between the top of the throne and the weapon in the foreground. It reduces the illusion of depth and it draws a lot of attention, especially because it's a high contrast area. James Gurney wrote a few things on his blog about it if you want to take a look. http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/tangencies.html In general also think about where you want your viewer to look- it's better to make your focal point higher contrast so your eye goes to it first. Looking forward to seeing your progress and more work
Thank you so much for your feedbacK! I see it now. I was so preoccupied with the idea of 'rule of thirds' I was missing even more important spot there.
I re-worked the composition accordingly to client feedback and how I felt about it, and it's still rough work in progress but I thought I'd share the process here : D
It's stil l super messy both rendering / Value wise, but I think Im getting somehwere here... or maybe not.
Busy being civil service agent and crashing in some freelance works, but I was watching Les miserables and absolutely loved this scene so I decided to make a quick study.
For last few weeks I've been feeling like I'm producing same qualities of work over and over again without improving or putting much thought on it, starting from details, lighting and composition.
I started this piece to tackle what I think is one of my greatest weakness, lack of dynamic lighting and details. Still work in progress, but I'd reallly appreciate any directional feedbacks
Hey, these are coming along great. Though those images are HUUUUUGE, last one is almost 16MB. Takes a long time to download them, especially on mobile. The longer people have to wait for your images to load, the less likely your work is going to be seen. Hope this helps!
@Splix Thank you so much!! @lotet Thank you master, I try not to be too anxious about stuff @Eric Chadwick I was wondering why it takes so long for me to load these images myself! I will definitely revamp all the images and upload them again, and from now on reduce the resolution. thank you so much for the tips! Also I'm super happy that admin visited my page I've resized all my images and re-uploaded them on this page, so I think it should be good from now on.
Hello people of polycount! It's been a while, I've been just grinding anatomies and fundamentals all over for last month or so.
Something I realized along in the process of studying is that I wasn't using my brush touches efficiently. I was just painting randomly until it looks nice without thinking about its components.
So, this still looks horrid and is WIP, I started a new composition where I really focus on economy of brushstrokes, thinking about what colors I would need to use and how I should shave before I just jump in and start scratching stuff. Excited to see where this leads, and always thanks for checking out my posts
Thank you for your kind comments I really do wish Im progressing, itts hard to tell these days for me : (
And Hello people of Polycount!
I kinda avoid posting 'bad' works here, because altho this is my improvement thread I feel very self conscious about uploading works that I don't like, but for sake of brutal honesty and my self-improvement I really need your help on this matter.
I laid down the basic components of this piece, not in detail but to the level where it's decipherable. I'd really appreciate it if you rip this piece apart and really could comment on every aspect on which I can make changes and improve on. My work starts instantly suffering when human gets involved within the composition and dynamic lighting kicks in.
I'm really really embarrassed to put this up since personally I feel like this is as bad as my art can be compared to other pieces but I want to be judge by my bad condition and still get praise and not cherry-pick the good ones. So... thank you in advance for all of you who bothered to come here and comment, I really really appreciate it.
Also, here's another quick question I need help with...
(sorry for dodgy edit, I used Windows paint to gather these around)
It's about the brush I use. I originally used very untextured basic painting brush that almsot has airbrush feeling to it. Around last July or so I started experimenting with much more textual paint-like brushes, which made me thought it's a better brush because I admired paintly feeling.
But recently Im thinking it might be detrimental to my skill development, since I felt like Im losing degree of detail in my paintings greatly. I feel like Im really lost in terms of where I should go, so any input would be greatly appreciated : (
Edit: i thought id share some sketches and studies i did, I only have photos of these but here ye goo
Found some time to work on a doodle painting for fun. Not really refined or done and since this is my first time painting sorta nighttime atmosphere so Im really struggling with it, but having a lot of fun Still WIP
@Doodlok good start! you might want to use your thirds for comp on boat and giant. Giant could be taller, and have less contrast. boat mast and sails could be taller too. more moonlite might look nice as well. The water on fire and the clouds are looking crisp! Cheers!
nice updates! really digging the arena one, I do think it looked better before your last update though, your entire composition is making the viewer look at the arena, but then you have all the faces looking at some sort of figure in the front. this makes the viewer struggle between the two focal points which is a shame.
other then that keep it up, and I deffinetly think you should post your bad stuff as well, you learn by your mistakes, not your successes
Thank you so much for your feedback! I was wondering how I should deal with Giant's contrast, I will definitely try to lower it and bring updated copy with composition. Im still struggling with lighting, will definitely try to give it more shine.
Thank you! I definitely agree with you, but that was actually one of the drafts for my client's freelance work and he insisted that specific composition where you can see both Arena and a dude standing in the middle so I had to go with that But I never saw it from your suggested PoV and now I understand how distracting it is, I will definitely make my personal copy of it with your suggestion updated and post it here. Thank you for your encouraging words!
Been working on freelance stuff again recently so not much to share, but I've been stuck with this one and wanted to ask your opinion : /
I'm playing around with the contrast / brightness of the main figure in the center and not sure how much value I should go for in general. AFter adjusting it for like half an hour while painting my eyes kinda lost track of objective view. Any kind of feedback will be greatly appreciated : ( Here's a lil comparison of high / low contrast that I'm torn between... Still work in process, but I want to catch the value before I just jump into it.
@Doodlok well, he looks like he's in a cave rather than below a bright sky, don't know if it helps. Try bringing a low opacity light blue layer over him. light blue rim light over the right shoulder too maybe. You could also move him to the left some more, the tangent with his hip and the tip of the boat is a bit uncomfortable. Quick PO:
@EVF Thank you for your suggestion! THe slight blue light overhaul definitely scratched where I was wondering what would be wrong, also with the tangent. I should be more careful about that I'll bring back update real soon, since I moved away from the piece a while
ANd hello people of polycount!
Ive been through a lot last month or so, mostly my client being rude and contemplating on how I feel about it and how I should deal with it. But if I can't power through this kind of silliness, how would I ever achieve anything great in this lifespan
Also I started introducing some new techniques in my work since I thought I was getting stale again. Photobash, for the first time in my life. STill learning and still very rough WIP, but please do tell what you think!
hey i think the bashing worked out pretty well, hard to tell whats foto or not so guess thats a good thing Sorry to hear about the hard times, but be assured we all go through tough phases in life, so you are not alone.
One thing i noticed is that the composition is very balanced in terms of sky and ground. So scaled the sky and buildings up quite a bit. Think that makes the boy look even more little and vulnerable.
Holy snap, That looks so much closer to what I have envisioned in my head!!! I moved away from the piece for now because I was hesitant whether it was something I liked or not, but now I'm definitely going back to work on it. Thank you so much for both your feedback and kind words!!
And hello people of Polycount,
I FINISHED MY FIRST FREELANCE GIG!
it was insanely long journey, and a soul crushing time of hating the quality of my work but it was also definitely one of the best reality check I've had on my skills. I've learnt that compared to professional works I was lacking everything, from details to design language fundamentally.
So away from just jabbering meaningless paintings for a while and I decided to really dedicate myself in developing viable and understandable details and conveying some meaning through my design. So here's my first attempt on such approach, at least a sketch
I picked up my early ideas from 2 years ago, trying to envision a fantasy world with taste of asian culture. I wanted authenticity in both Sci/fi aspect and Asian aspect of the character, so I looked a lot at DARPA robots when I worked on this. Idea started from a dumb idea, what if Han Dynasty of China never died out, and its traditions and conditions continued on to the level where they would've been making robots with social hierarchy intact?
Do leave a lot of comments, and thank you all for your feedback SO MUCH. Even if I don't go back on some pieces to work on it, I remember every feedback you guys give and try to apply it on my next piece and on. YOU ARE MY MENTORS, thank you so so much.
I've been catching up with all my previous feedbacks and goign back to some works that I haven't had time to respond to due to my freelance thingy, so I think my update would be much more frequent now. I just wanted to drop a WIP of my previous sketch for fun, not sure if I like the color scheme but I'll see where it goes : d
@lotet I just came in to upload my semi-final WIP piece and just saw this feedback! Now that I look back I see what you mean by lining up. I'll have to go back and adjust around before I completely finish this up
Still working on fully coloring that dwarf thingy and changing the composition a bit, but in the meantime I gave a quick lighting exercise since I SUCK at dynamic lighting. STill hard : (
More B&W practice along with compsotion practice. I didnt intend th add the flames in in the initial planning stage so the value got kinda messed up, but somehow tried to salvage it...
Seems like nobody checks this post anymore Boring posts, but here comes more! My friend asked me to draw something for her, so here's a lil commission (didnt get paid tho) work for mein friend..
And hello people of polycount! I'm almost done with my service and ive been getting crazy busy, so mostly Ive been just doodling this and that but I decided to quickly work on something that I can post here.
Still rough and wip, but wanted to move away from fantasy a bit and go back to good old scifi..
This is not a finished work, I was just playing around with mixer brush and trying to come up with a new composition and came up with this. So this might as well be a rough sketch, but it did gave me some fresh inspiration to start a proper piece, so I'll make sure I keep you guys updated!
I recently bought a book on speedpainting and im grabbing so many interesting techniques. Ive been playing around with photobash and film grains, heres lil 30 min practice just to see how it works out overall. More to come!
@lotet thank you so much for your kind words!!! He is an absolute inspiration of mine, an honor to be compared to him
Also, hello people of polycount! Some works I made while studying different workflows. They were all done as workflow studies so theyre very rough, but just wanted to share with you guys which direction im moving into.
Been away for trip last week so not much work to do, but more speedpaint practice coming up I feel like starting a project, so might make a separate thread with that...
Been quite busy over last couple days as my discharge comes close, but managed to grab some studies today lunchtime.. Ignore that bit of paper on the lft bottom, I was trying to figure out timetable for my next semester
Here's some big update for you guys. One of the biggest reason why I haven't been working on any portfolio pieces was because I wasn't confident enough to work on them, but recently I've gathered some confidence to take my works to next step and really polish them.
SO for next couple months I will be posting my stuff on separate thread, and this thread will be used to upload my non-portfolio related doodles. Here's some tease for my new project, hope you guys drop by and check out some progress
Going back on my words, I decided to record ALL of my project progress here : / kinda lose the meaning of keeping a long post if I create another thread.
More update with my portfolio project!!
This one was a quick doodle to see what kind of color / atmosphere I'd give for the character. Not really satisfied, but one of the iterations I guess
Replies
Some WIP piece that I can show around : / Still have loads of information to add onto the scene
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/tangencies.html
In general also think about where you want your viewer to look- it's better to make your focal point higher contrast so your eye goes to it first.
Looking forward to seeing your progress and more work
Thank you so much for your feedbacK! I see it now. I was so preoccupied with the idea of 'rule of thirds' I was missing even more important spot there.
I re-worked the composition accordingly to client feedback and how I felt about it, and it's still rough work in progress but I thought I'd share the process here : D
It's stil
l super messy both rendering / Value wise, but I think Im getting somehwere here... or maybe not.
Some updates and doodles : /
Possibly one of my fav work so far.
Busy being civil service agent and crashing in some freelance works, but I was watching Les miserables and absolutely loved this scene so I decided to make a quick study.
For last few weeks I've been feeling like I'm producing same qualities of work over and over again without improving or putting much thought on it, starting from details, lighting and composition.
I started this piece to tackle what I think is one of my greatest weakness, lack of dynamic lighting and details. Still work in progress, but I'd reallly appreciate any directional feedbacks
worth noting as well, the better you become, the slower and less noticeable your progress will be (Yoda voice) :P
http://polycount.com/discussion/63361/information-about-polycount-new-member-introductions/p1#make
@lotet Thank you master, I try not to be too anxious about stuff
@Eric Chadwick I was wondering why it takes so long for me to load these images myself! I will definitely revamp all the images and upload them again, and from now on reduce the resolution. thank you so much for the tips! Also I'm super happy that admin visited my page
Hello people of polycount! It's been a while, I've been just grinding anatomies and fundamentals all over for last month or so.
Something I realized along in the process of studying is that I wasn't using my brush touches efficiently. I was just painting randomly until it looks nice without thinking about its components.
So, this still looks horrid and is WIP, I started a new composition where I really focus on economy of brushstrokes, thinking about what colors I would need to use and how I should shave before I just jump in and start scratching stuff. Excited to see where this leads, and always thanks for checking out my posts
Thank you for your kind comments
And Hello people of Polycount!
I kinda avoid posting 'bad' works here, because altho this is my improvement thread I feel very self conscious about uploading works that I don't like, but for sake of brutal honesty and my self-improvement I really need your help on this matter.
I laid down the basic components of this piece, not in detail but to the level where it's decipherable. I'd really appreciate it if you rip this piece apart and really could comment on every aspect on which I can make changes and improve on. My work starts instantly suffering when human gets involved within the composition and dynamic lighting kicks in.
I'm really really embarrassed to put this up since personally I feel like this is as bad as my art can be compared to other pieces but I want to be judge by my bad condition and still get praise and not cherry-pick the good ones. So... thank you in advance for all of you who bothered to come here and comment, I really really appreciate it.
Also, here's another quick question I need help with...
(sorry for dodgy edit, I used Windows paint to gather these around)
It's about the brush I use. I originally used very untextured basic painting brush that almsot has airbrush feeling to it. Around last July or so I started experimenting with much more textual paint-like brushes, which made me thought it's a better brush because I admired paintly feeling.
But recently Im thinking it might be detrimental to my skill development, since I felt like Im losing degree of detail in my paintings greatly. I feel like Im really lost in terms of where I should go, so any input would be greatly appreciated : (
Edit: i thought id share some sketches and studies i did, I only have photos of these but here ye goo
Found some time to work on a doodle painting for fun. Not really refined or done and since this is my first time painting sorta nighttime atmosphere so Im really struggling with it, but having a lot of fun
you might want to use your thirds for comp on boat and giant.
Giant could be taller, and have less contrast.
boat mast and sails could be taller too.
more moonlite might look nice as well.
The water on fire and the clouds are looking crisp!
Cheers!
other then that keep it up, and I deffinetly think you should post your bad stuff as well, you learn by your mistakes, not your successes
Thank you so much for your feedback! I was wondering how I should deal with Giant's contrast, I will definitely try to lower it and bring updated copy with composition. Im still struggling with lighting, will definitely try to give it more shine.
@lotet
Thank you! I definitely agree with you, but that was actually one of the drafts for my client's freelance work and he insisted that specific composition where you can see both Arena and a dude standing in the middle so I had to go with that
Been working on freelance stuff again recently so not much to share, but I've been stuck with this one and wanted to ask your opinion : /
I'm playing around with the contrast / brightness of the main figure in the center and not sure how much value I should go for in general. AFter adjusting it for like half an hour while painting my eyes kinda lost track of objective view. Any kind of feedback will be greatly appreciated : ( Here's a lil comparison of high / low contrast that I'm torn between... Still work in process, but I want to catch the value before I just jump into it.
You could also move him to the left some more, the tangent with his hip and the tip of the boat is a bit uncomfortable.
Quick PO:
ANd hello people of polycount!
Ive been through a lot last month or so, mostly my client being rude and contemplating on how I feel about it and how I should deal with it. But if I can't power through this kind of silliness, how would I ever achieve anything great in this lifespan
Also I started introducing some new techniques in my work since I thought I was getting stale again. Photobash, for the first time in my life. STill learning and still very rough WIP, but please do tell what you think!
Sorry to hear about the hard times, but be assured we all go through tough phases in life, so you are not alone.
One thing i noticed is that the composition is very balanced in terms of sky and ground.
So scaled the sky and buildings up quite a bit. Think that makes the boy look even more little and vulnerable.
Holy snap, That looks so much closer to what I have envisioned in my head!!! I moved away from the piece for now because I was hesitant whether it was something I liked or not, but now I'm definitely going back to work on it. Thank you so much for both your feedback and kind words!!
And hello people of Polycount,
I FINISHED MY FIRST FREELANCE GIG!
it was insanely long journey, and a soul crushing time of hating the quality of my work but it was also definitely one of the best reality check I've had on my skills. I've learnt that compared to professional works I was lacking everything, from details to design language fundamentally.
So away from just jabbering meaningless paintings for a while and I decided to really dedicate myself in developing viable and understandable details and conveying some meaning through my design. So here's my first attempt on such approach, at least a sketch
I picked up my early ideas from 2 years ago, trying to envision a fantasy world with taste of asian culture. I wanted authenticity in both Sci/fi aspect and Asian aspect of the character, so I looked a lot at DARPA robots when I worked on this. Idea started from a dumb idea, what if Han Dynasty of China never died out, and its traditions and conditions continued on to the level where they would've been making robots with social hierarchy intact?
Do leave a lot of comments, and thank you all for your feedback SO MUCH. Even if I don't go back on some pieces to work on it, I remember every feedback you guys give and try to apply it on my next piece and on. YOU ARE MY MENTORS, thank you so so much.
I've been catching up with all my previous feedbacks and goign back to some works that I haven't had time to respond to due to my freelance thingy, so I think my update would be much more frequent now. I just wanted to drop a WIP of my previous sketch for fun, not sure if I like the color scheme but I'll see where it goes : d
Some update on the hue and quick warhammer fan doodle I did over lunch
Still working on fully coloring that dwarf thingy and changing the composition a bit, but in the meantime I gave a quick lighting exercise since I SUCK at dynamic lighting. STill hard : (
More B&W practice along with compsotion practice. I didnt intend th add the flames in in the initial planning stage so the value got kinda messed up, but somehow tried to salvage it...
Seems like nobody checks this post anymore
Thanks!!! I hope it gets better and better
And hello people of polycount! I'm almost done with my service and ive been getting crazy busy, so mostly Ive been just doodling this and that but I decided to quickly work on something that I can post here.
Still rough and wip, but wanted to move away from fantasy a bit and go back to good old scifi..
I would crop some of the bottom of to have better focus on the robot.
Thank you so much for the feedback and complement! Yeah I cropped the bottom a bit and it definitely looks more balanced now.
Also, hello people of polycount!
I've been working on lil something that I quite like and like to share, was inspired by a food truck near my workplace at night
This is not a finished work, I was just playing around with mixer brush and trying to come up with a new composition and came up with this. So this might as well be a rough sketch, but it did gave me some fresh inspiration to start a proper piece, so I'll make sure I keep you guys updated!
I recently bought a book on speedpainting and im grabbing so many interesting techniques. Ive been playing around with photobash and film grains, heres lil 30 min practice just to see how it works out overall. More to come!
more study with previous method, really like where this is going!!!!
Also, hello people of polycount! Some works I made while studying different workflows. They were all done as workflow studies so theyre very rough, but just wanted to share with you guys which direction im moving into.
Been away for trip last week so not much work to do, but more speedpaint practice coming up
Some paintover work I did at work...
Been quite busy over last couple days as my discharge comes close, but managed to grab some studies today lunchtime.. Ignore that bit of paper on the lft bottom, I was trying to figure out timetable for my next semester
Here's some big update for you guys. One of the biggest reason why I haven't been working on any portfolio pieces was because I wasn't confident enough to work on them, but recently I've gathered some confidence to take my works to next step and really polish them.
SO for next couple months I will be posting my stuff on separate thread, and this thread will be used to upload my non-portfolio related doodles. Here's some tease for my new project, hope you guys drop by and check out some progress
Going back on my words, I decided to record ALL of my project progress here : / kinda lose the meaning of keeping a long post if I create another thread.
More update with my portfolio project!!
This one was a quick doodle to see what kind of color / atmosphere I'd give for the character. Not really satisfied, but one of the iterations I guess
(Quick overview? not really solid but wanted to see how things would come along in color)
Trying out new designs for biomechanic stuff : d