IOW #1 - The Banner

[S Rose]

A rough mockup.

[grenogs]

Mr. Gadbury: Though I don't have much of a problem with the desk, what you could do to make it more obvious that it's a desk is maybe add a bit of canvas and show the front side of it, with little drawers in it to show it's an oldschool desk mabye =)
grenogs: Thanks! I think a lot of people still have a soft spot for these kinds of illustrations xD I know I do! I thought about having her holding a paintbrush too but I was wondering if that would be logical since she's the model here, not the painter. Then again, I could also add a little travelling easel and make a painter paint a painter... hmmmm....
jpacer: I'm probably super late with this, but I have to say I like the wizard better atm. If you're working on the one with the knight I suggest that you move the stone more to the right or left of the knight. Right now the composition is very vertical (which might be intended) but I personally think that placing it more to the top, optically next to the knight, it could create a lot of depth to the image.

logical? If it was of a present day image i would totally agree with you, but it's an image of the 50's, where they taught school children the safest place to be under a nuclear attack was to hide under their school desk. I think logic could be given a miss.

[Dreoilin]

Rengin: I loooove the pinup style you're going with (sorry I took Mucha lol, great minds think alike!) I'm glad you went with that pose, it was my favorite from your sketches

ryansumo: I really like the idea of the father bear telling the story to his cubs, and I like what you ended up doing with the text!


Pulled another all nighter to finish this- I'm totally wiped out! I was reasonably happy with the colors on my mac, but then I looked at it on my laptop and it looks like poop (I want a monitor calibrator soooo bad)

[Gadbury]

Thanks for the helpful feedback guys. Here's another update, I cut the desk back slightly to reveal more of the floor in front, I also cut the shadow down at the sides on the desk. Hopefully its looking a little clearer now. I didn't want to extend the canvas any more vertically, because it would start to get huge, and I'd have to extend it quite a bit to reveal the desk drawers etc (even though that would probably have been the best solution)

[LA-Fairy]

I could use some major cc to give this one last blow tomorrow for the time missed. But our ac is woring again! yay

[Gadbury]

LA Fairy - I think the witch character is maybe a bit small - I would be tempted to blow her up large enough so that part of her dress is off the page to the left and bottom. I think the rules and the introduction at the top could be a bit larger also. I like the border decoration, would be nice to see more decoration of that kind around the whole edge of the image too.

[Rob Powell]

Dreolin: looks great, id recommend getting rid of the white, maybe replacing it with the background colour of CA, looking forward to seeing this finished!

[Dreoilin]

LA-Fairy: The magic effects behind the rules are so bright and colorful- maybe you could have some of that light reflecting off the witch to bring some color into her?

Rob Powell: Thanks! aahh actually it is finished I don't have any more time to work on it this weekend
*edit* ahh well I liked that idea so I tried it out really quick lol- better?

[Rob Powell]

Yeah that's my bad, didn't read just looked at the pretty pictures

[Gadbury]

Looks a lot nicer that way I think Dreoilin

[Dreoilin]

I like it a lot better too, so I went ahead and made the change on my final. Thanks you guys!!

[Rengin]

Looks a lot nicer that way I think Dreoilin

Seconded.

[Rengin]

LA-Fairy: I think a slight hint of a bg, or something she's standing on would solidify her presence on the page more. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, vague references to objects often help people fill in the blanks themselves, like Gil Elvgren did a lot with his girls (I can't help but pick him as an example after so many days looking at his work hahah xD)
An extreme example
Also an example

grenogs: Haha I see your point! xD Paintbrush and easel added!
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Alright, another update from me, with two different versions. Not sure which one works better =\ Opinions and critiques appreciated!

[Gadbury]

Rengin - I prefer the look of the easel with the rules but the writing is a bit harder to read - If you can make the easel any bigger with the writing, I think that would look better

[grenogs]

rengin: personally i think the first image is better, the rules become part of the image, and has more of an Elvgren look to it, where as the second image looks like you've just slapped the rules on as an after thought.

[ryansumo]

Dreoilin - breathtaking work!
Rengin - I agree the easel works better, bperhaps if you had it facing inside instead of outside it would look better?

[Rob Powell]

Dreoilin: another suggestion, that you can take or leave cuz I understand time is limited, is that at the bottom, the hair gets cut off a bit, adding more space at the bottom so that you can add to the hair so it doesn't get cut off.

Rengin: Really liking the Elvgren style to this. as ryansumo stated turning the easel inwards would improve the image to help keep the focus towards the center, doing this would keep the viewer's eye in the center of the image

[Aly Fell]

Dreoilin - The Art Nouveau feel is working great! Two suggestions: the jawline on the visible face has a very long 'back' up to the ear. Maybe smooth it off a bit or move the angle change slightly further back? Also, the banner going across the other face doesn't work for me. How about reducing the width of the banner to stop before the face and making the text slightly smaller? Compositionally it's just a bit clumsy covering something as important as dominant face... I hope it's OK but I did a quick paint-over...

[zephyri]

So many cool entries for this! There's an update for mine at the bottom of the crits - not quite as far on as I'd like to be by this stage :/ Curse you warcraft and your alluring 7 free days of game time.



So Rose: I have a soft spot for this entry.. reminds me of super old school kids book illustration for very young children. Not that fond of the font you've picked for the Illustration of the week text.. the bleeding effect makes it hard to read. I'd either put it into a similar font as your main body of text or change the main body to suit, so it feels cohesive.

Dreolin: Gooorgeous! Definitely getting my vote as a big mucha fan! Love the flashes of really bright green in the peacock feathers and the iris in her hair is just lovely. One teensy suggestion.. my eye keeps being drawn to the line of her chin - the linework there seems quite heavy, and I'd be tempted to just blend some of it out into the shadow of the neckline to soften her face a little.

Mr Gadbury: Definitely hits the 'telling a story' vibe and the image itself is composed really nicely. My only issue is with the current readability of the rules - the all caps text is cool, but I'd give the lines a bit more rom to breathe from each other, and maybe increase the size of the linebreak between each rule so that people can see each rule seperately. And just cause the graphic designer in me is pedantic, I'd also maybe suggest aligning the 'Illustration' at the top of the image to the rest of the text below it, as the margin you've left to the side of it is very close.

Rengin - Yay pinup! Think you've captured the Elvgren vibe so well here! Agree with everyone else about the canvas with the rules. Text wise, I think you could lose the asterisks between each rule - if you really wanted something there just a small line would probably break it nicely without encroaching on the text itself. Only other crit I have is that the line where her chin meets her shoulder is quite fuzzy... I'd maybe tweak the shadow under her chin a little to extend all the way round to the left of her neck, so that her face pops out. Great curve on her legs and feet too btw!

LA Fairy - definitely agree with Mr Gadbury's suggestion of blowing the character up a lot, maybe so she fills the left hand side of the image and maybe run the text at the top (the story) around her. I'd also maybe either lessen the saturation of the spell behind the rules, or extend the bright part down a bit more so the lower rules are as easily readble as the top ones. Did you a quick paintover suggestion, hope you don't mind!

[Aksel Ludvigsen]

Time to finish up. Only ten hours left, people!

[Rengin]

Aly Fell, I personally think that moving the title and completing the face distracts a lot from girl that's supposed to be the focal point. I guess I'm not agreeing that it's a dominant face and I think it should be part of the bg. I do agree that the paintover of her jawline works better this way though =)

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zephyri, Rob Powell, ryansumo, grenogs, Mr. Gadbury, thanks for the helpful comments!

I enlarged the text a bit and used save for web this time so I could make the image a bit bigger without the filesize being too big for the forum... xD Also removed the asterixes so there's more space for the text, but gave them different colors to make sure one rule can be easily visually seperated from the other. Also touched up her chin a bit, thanks for that pointer =)

[Gadbury]

Rengin - To cut the file size down a bit, you can save with a JPEG quality of 11 or even 10, and I don't think you can see the difference. I nearly always end up saving mine as 11 on the slider since my files always go just over the limit.

[Dreoilin]

Rob Powell: Thanks again man! Fortunately I got a chance to fix that- updated my final! Again, I'm so glad you gave me that advice about taking out the white- I like the picture so much more now!

Aly Fell: WOW!! I'm so so honored that you would take the time to do a paintover for me- I admire your stuff so much! I think your right that it's weird to cover that face- at the time I was thinking it would be mysterious lol. I really meant for the focus to be on the girl that's painting, I probably shouldn't have put that face in at all When I get the time I think I'm going to tweak this picture and take out the banner elements, and I'm totally going to do what you showed me! (I wish I had time for major changes now- I'm cursing the fact that I have to go out of town to pick up a bridesmaids dress today! I will at least try to fix that wonky jawline)

zephyri: Waaa I love this picture! Hustle hustle and finish plz It really reminds me of Rackham (another of my idols)

You're totally right about the jawline on mine- I did that last minute while tweaking lines- now that I'm less sleep deprived I hate it lol. I've gotten so much good advice- so many things to fix- not enough time in a day lol I need a time turner!

Rengin: I'm so glad you changed the angle on the easel with the rules!! (and that you went with the easel) I think it really made the composition click! I was having the same problem with my picture being too big- this was me yesterday lol: I wish I had seen Mr. Gadbury's comment- it took me forever to figure that trick out - I ended up having to change the quality of mine to 10.

*editing this post so I'm not as much of a spammer*- made the changes that I could- hopefully I've fixed some of the problems (I know there's a million more though lol) Getting yelled at that I'm late now so gotta run- good luck everybody!!