civil war guy

[N-man]

been working on this the past couple of days. please critique me so i can improve it thanks guys.
edit: the white outline is from me changing the backround to 50% grey from white...just seemed to bright to look at, but i plan on cleaning up the edges.

[AmbrMerlinus]

Unless he's taking a step, his right foot (viewer's left) should be down just a hair more.

[SoufMeng]

First off i think you shouldnt have duplicated one of his halves to get the other.
It resulted in a very stiff pose plus you have been so busy trying to make it look like it wasnt copy/paste that you forgot to fix the lighting and now his hands show there are two equally strong lightsources coming from opposite directions while his face is side-lit only from the left.

Im not saying copy/paste is forbidden especially when its your own work you use but here it looks like you were going for a rather casual standing pose and the problem is that, usually, symmetrical poses are not casual. They may convey authority, determination, things like that but not what you're trying to say here, mind you im not even sure what you're trying to say here, hes just standing there right?

My second big critique would be that he doesnt look that much like a sailor and that im not sure i would have guessed that without the title. (For instance i find it strange that he has no white on his clothes, most sailors do no?)
So maybe make a search for reference and just like when you're writing some text remember the reader/viewer is not in your head.
I guess the image will be more successful when you find the right balance between giving enough hints of what your character is and holding in enough so it doesnt turn into a documentary diagram on sailor clothing.

[N-man]

thanks for the replies no i didn't copy and paste his whole body just his hand...i was lazy, and i shouldn't have done so. i wanted it to show the character off like in orthographic views or something. anyways. i worked some more on it. I cleaned the edges, worked on face, and clothes. hopefully everything has improved. also i had started making his coat based off of civil war uniform and i didn't know what to do for a shirt so i added stripes and it reminded me of a sailor. so i went back and changed it to a dress shirt of sorts to keep it military oriented.

edit: i worked on it some more so i uploaded the new version here.

i figured id put a progression so people dont have to scroll up.