Hidden Passage

AnimeAngel

Hey all. Been working on this piece for a while now. Its for the Unknown places challenge by itsArtmag.com. Nearing completion, so thought I would get some feedback on it.
Deadline for entry is Monday, so have a little time to make some changes but can't change anything major at this point.

If anyone is interested I have been posting my daily progress of this project on my blog http://AngelTrudeau.Blogspot.com

I used Max, Zbrush and Photoshop

DarthNater

Damn I thought this was a painting! Looks awesome!

The only crit I have is the kid looks odd. The way his shirt is hanging makes him look very fat and the way the arms are posed makes it look like his head is twisted too far.

Adam Curtis

Cool! My eye seems to just draw to that crazy bright lamp, rather than the interesting passage. Maybe dim it down a bit and give the red bit more of a glow or something.

AnimeAngel

Thanks for the comments guys.
Ya the kid I used for reference was wearing big baggy hand-me downs.In hindsight I should have modeled him with out the sweatshirt/ jacket, but I didnt.
Also, Agreed that the lamp was to bright, so I did some adjustments. Hopefully that will help.

A.Kincade

This is freaking awesome!!! Love secret passages. Cool stuff!

Clopticon

Ok so dont get too offended by this but the secret passage is starting to look a bit like - hmmm how to put this... Georgia Okeefe if you catch my drift

Steve Schulze

I think Clopticon may be staring at it too hard.

One thing you might consider is that there isn't really much sense of depth to the passage way at this point. It could well be a scary cupboard. It's probably just a matter of tweaking the lighting so that you can see the tunnel disappearing off into the background.

gsokol

Until Jackablade mentioned how the passage doesn't look like it has depth, I didnt realize thats what it was. I really think that the area is just too bright. Darken the red or maybe even try a different color.

The boy is posed quite oddly. In order for him to have his back posed like that and have both arms holding onto something, his left arm would have to be bent a little bit...otherwise it looks like his right arm is 4 inches longer than his left.

AnimeAngel

Thanks for the comments guys. Very helpful. I will try and see If can't add some more depth to the background, perhaps darker toward the door and gets brighter as it goes down the hall.

System

Really nice work so far!

I think you could add some mood lighting to the scene to make it more mysterious, atm the light is fine if you want to show off textures, but it's not really selling the idea very well imo.

Also the lamp, yeh, it still looks too bright in glow and casting and I had to look hard to see that it was in fact a floorstander, I feel it's too short and easily mistaken as a desk lamp. Try moving the lamp to the left of the chair inbetween the book and stand so that at least some of the lamps base is visible and make it a bit taller.

Hope that helps
ps: want me to do you a paintover?

AnimeAngel

Well worked a bit on trying to get a bit more depth in the passage.
Think you might be right about the lamp, going to try and move it and see how it goes. Unfortunately that means I have to re-render, so might not have enough time to do it before the deadline, but gonna do some test and see how it goes.

AnimeAngel

Well moved the lamp and tweaked the lights in the passageway to give more depth. I think it looks much better composition wise with the lamp moved over. Thank you GCMP for the advice on that. Still waiting for the AO pass to render, but once that is done and applied then this image will be complete. That is unless anyone else sees any other adjustment or changes I need to make.

konstruct

hey man, nice image so far-
some crits tho:

The arrangement of the assets in your scene should draw the viewers eyes in, and right now they are fighting against that. You might want to try arranging the assets in a way that makes it a welcome space for the eye to flow through- I like to think about it like fung shei. you want scene to allow the eye to dance around easily, with out having to stop and make depth judgments etc. you`ve almost created a tangent between the back of the chair, and the entrance of he passage. If you rotate the chair/lamp/bookstand arrangement, 70 or so degrees, it should solve that and make the image more inviting to look at.

I biggest thing that bothers me is the arms on the kid. arms when hanging meet mid thigh. The right arm is probably the right length bit its lifted far to high. also I would definitely make a push to make the left arm longer, and bent to compensate for the smaller distance it has to travel. This is the kind of thing you can easily demonstrate your self by posing your own arms like the kid is, and seeing how your arm placement differs.

also the lighting is good- but it doesn't feel like your giving any thought to what really matters in this image.


Probably the biggest thing you want to do is draw the viewers eyes to that crazy red abnormal passage behind the bookshelf. I`d make a stab at having the lamp significantly dimmer, and having your key light be a fierce reddish orange light spilling out from the passage.

lastly- whats with the 2d webby tendril things? I thought they were supposed to be weird tendril fingers or something until I saw the harsh angles at the bottom that kind of look like cobb webs? I defiantly think this image needs something like that (to break up the border around the passage) but this 2d overlay thing isn't cutting it. Their not receiving light, so its dramatically flatting what I imagine you want to be the focal point,

I would ditch the cobb web stuff all together and make a stab at modeling some little tendril bits you can duplicate, flip, rotate, etc etc all along your passage frame. That way the light will react to them appropriately, and make the image that much cooler.

At any rate its a really nice image and thats why I felt I needed to critique it so thurougly, Its on the right path, but some finagling will really take it the extra distance.