Finalizing Floating Island

Hypnocube

I've been working on this project for a while, and i think it's nearly done. But I've been looking at it for so long that it's likely I'm completely missing something that I should add, take away or improve on.


Here's what I have so far. My work on the left and the concept I'm working from on the right.

I've also toyed around with adding outlines to help match the look of the concept. But I'm not sure if it's helping very much.

Thoughts on the silluette? colors? background? outlines? Any words of advice are welcome. I'm not sure what to do from here, I just really need some fresh eye's opinion on this.

Thanks!

Ashervisalis

The colours would flow a lot nicer if you made the crystals at the bottom orange instead of blue. There is also no focal point, everything is saturated and well lit, so my eyes are darting all over the place. Did you sculpt this all in ZBrush?

Zack Fowler

I think the main thing holding you back here is that the concept art is meant as a blueprint or schematic rather than a fully-realized target render to be matched as directly as possible, because that's the intent I gather from looking at it. A lot of concept art that doesn't have rendered out materials and lighting like that is done simply to save time on the part of the concept artist, rather than to say "I actually do want this large surface to be a flat color" as the end result.

You've done a really good job of capturing all the forms shown in the concept, but I think the textures and lighting are undercutting that work. What you'll want to do is find reference material of whatever target 3D art style you want to translate that concept into and work those into the piece. You could go for a colorful cartoony look like the Spyro remake, or the common handpainted game style, as a couple examples. So look up direct reference material of what giant crystal textures would look like in that style, what rocky cliffs textures look like in that style, what grassy surfaces and mossy staircases look like in that style, etc etc. And then try applying those texturing styles to the surfaces you've modeled out here.

To get you started in that direction, I made a quick paintover of what it could look like in a generic handpainted game style, focusing mostly on the area around the staircases. A few things to note are the way the grass is more clumpy and less grainy, almost every outer edge gets some irregular highlighting, and there's some brushstrokey stuff going on across the larger flat surfaces to make them more interesting. I also changed the lighting a little to give a better sense of depth and dimension to the surfaces -- the surfaces facing more toward the right are a bit darker here and it makes the shapes a bit easier to understand.

Hope this is helpful!

JesseL

Zach flower has fantastic advice, especially with lighting as your piece seems way too flat. Adding more shadows to add more depth to the piece will help emphasise objects. What you should also always do is use your entire dynamic range, showed below is Zachs photo but with the levels adjusted to use the entire range (hold alt while dragging to see what will be clipped)

Something which I feel is a little off is the art style changes a bit. For instance the purple stone pillars are a bit bland with smooth shadows and no highlights, while the cliff face is more ragged without as much blurring, texture is a stark contrast as well. I think focusing a little on trying to harmonise this art style contrast will give better results, I would start with the tree leaves redoing them in as if you were making the grass but with more layers/overlapping (hope that makes sense)

Looks great and hope to see it finished

Hypnocube

Yikes! I can't believe its been 5 months since I've updated this. I got delayed by the artstation challenge and a bunch of other stuff. But I've improved and learned a lot since I last worked on this. Between that and all the awesome advice you guys gave me earlier I think I've made some significant improvements.

Anyway here's a long overdue update:


 



I tried to add more detailed texture to each of the rocky elements, and improve the lighting in the scene. I've also completely overhauled the grass, leaf, and tree textures. And I've started adding grass blade meshes around the island to break up the grass/rock transition, and to create some interest in the grassy area.

I'm really happy with how much I've improved this so far. But I think I'm going to take another pass at some of the textures before I call it done. But before I do that, I would like to once again make a plea to anyone out there to bestow some advice or critique of what I've got at this point.

Thanks once again for all the advice so far! Its been incredibly useful!

Hypnocube

Got this project finished in time for me clear my schedule for death stranding.

Check the whole thing out at https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L2G22k

Thanks for all the great advice everyone!