About ur crab woman: there's smt really nice about that concept which got lost, imo, in the final 3d render. That's partially due to the clear plain-definition obtained by the precise palette (vs the smooth "flat" rendering of the 3d), and due to the absence of the top-light gradient. U can fake-n-bake it with a gradient…
Some time ago (about 1.5 years, I think), I made some thumbnails for the villain of my current project (Girls with Icky Things): The Spirit of the Earth. There were some things I liked in the thumbnails, but I still had a few issues. About a year ago, I wound up making a Girls with Icky Things image featuring all the…