Blizzard 2019 Student Contest Submission

alexrc

Hi all, I'm entering in this year's Blizzard student contest! 
This is what I've got so far. Everything was modeled in 3dsMax and handpainted in Photoshop and 3dCoat. Some assets are still not painted, and I'll be touching up on some of the textures to give them a final polish.

Any feedback would be awesome!

Brian "Panda" Choi

It's a solid start.  Everything is feeling flat, like the depth of the scene is crunched, despite the lighting composition.

alexrc

Thanks for the critique Brian. I completely agree. I had the opposite problem earlier where the foreground was a bit too far away where the main focus (the structure area) was a bit too small so I pushed everything forward a few feet. Ill see if I can find a happy middle between the two.

Brian "Panda" Choi

I think the solution is less to do with actual world coordinates and instead pushing into post processes like ambient occlusion, etc.

LaurenBamlett

Wow, I especially love the way the ground texture reads.

I think in terms of leading the eye, it may benefit you to de-saturate portions of the environment while using saturation to highlight the important assets in the scene. Here's a quick rough job I did with masks in Photoshop.

alexrc

Thanks for the feedback guys. 
I moved some things around and worked with the lighting a bit more adding some lights here and there. I also added a few elements such as the hanging vines and I decided that the rocks behind the structure were kind of obscuring its shape so I decided to move them over to give a better silhouette (I think). 
I used a blue-ish light to sort of desaturate the foreground a little bit as well.

Odow

It's a pretty nice start, your painting skill are showing however i think your biggest issue and the reason why it feels flat is your value are off. Everything except for the roof and the beam structure on your house is exactly in the same value range, lighting is helping a bit for sure, but if you look the ground on the foreground it's the same as all your plant and trees.

snorrow

Hi alexrc, I'm not an expert in environment, but I would say you have to create a sense of depth in your painting. Playing with fog and light values is a good idea to detach background from foreground Good luck for the contest though! I participate to the character art section  

alexrc

@snorrow Thanks for the feedback! It's actually not a painting though, it's a 3D scene. I agree though, looking at black and white is making it clear that values could be pushed. I'll see what I can do about that!

@Odow Thanks for the feedback Odow. I completely agree with you and Snorrow. I will see what I can do about the values and push them a bit.

alexrc

Tried to work more with depth and moving things around for a better composition. Also changed some alphas and painted the rocks in the back a bit more. I also adjusted the values of a couple of things to get a better read

alexrc

Calling this one finished. Thanks for the feedback guys!