The Champion Of War: Duty Beyond Death

Free Wing Studios

Hello Polycount community,

This is my first post on polycount. I would like to share my work with you all and see what everyone thinks. This painting entitled "The Champion Of War: Duty Beyond Death" was created with Painter 9.5 and a Intuis 3. He is a original cheractor from one of my stories. The scene is dark and lit only by diffused moonlight, which creates a challange to pull the detail out without any artificial lights while maintaining the dark moonlit night environment. I have stuck to a limmited pallete of mostly blue hues to capture the cold blue light of the moon. Feed back from my fellow artists would be greatly appriciated. How do you all adress the issue of natural moonlit environments?

Thanks for your time,
David Ferguson
Free Wing Studios

Ged

Hi.Well Im new here too but its a good painting, there could possibly have been more depth to the shapes if there was stronger specular highlights...like a bit of a reflection of moonlight or a city in the distance or something.

low odor

He looks very flat, and I would loose the texture filter. The pose looks really unnatural...he has a bad case of twins. And the wholde diffused moonlight pallette makes everything muted dull and muddy(I'm guilty of this when I do digital painting too). To make it more interesting I would add some stronger spec (as Ged Suggested). Just remember that cloth armor and skin all refelct light differently.

mikebart

I agree with low odor and I think you could put some more contrast into the hair, its a nice design I realy like the concept

Free Wing Studios

Great critiques... I will try to loosen up, ad more asymetry, create stronger specular lights, and make my colors less muddy. It sure is helpfull to get honest critiqes from other artists, thank you.

Free Wing Studios

Hello again,

After receiving some feedback from this and other forums it seemed to be a consensus that this painting was to dark so I tried to lighten it up a bit. Hopefully it reads better. I Have been challenging myself with low light scenes lately, trying to find out how dark is too dark. Your opinions would be helpful to me with this.

David Ferguson
Free Wing Studios™

Ninjas

The shadows and highlights read very flatly.

Em.

Agreed with ninjas, I think you could push some areas darker and some more specular, overall it's a really nice piece, good level of detail and all that, just needs a little more love to make it pop.

Ninjas

I think the main issue isn't so much with the levels )although they could be better) but with the actual shapes of the shadows and positions of the highlights.

Tulkamir

Hey man, it's a nice painting, but in my opinion it's major problem is composition. Right now it's extremely symmetrical. There is little eye control going on beyond "Look at me, I'm right in the middle of the picture".

I think that it could benefit greatly from a bit more planning to get a more dynamic and interesting compostion going on. (Especially with the static pose the character is in).

Other than that, it's looking cool.

Free Wing Studios

Thank you all for the helpful critiques and the compliments.