Strays (Promo illustration - work in progress)

[wylielise]

Here's an illustration I'm working on. The left image represents the final cropped dimensions I'm planning on, right is full working view and character detail. Rendering on the characters is approaching finished; I haven't started in on the monster yet other than the tentacle in the foreground. At this stage I think things are still a little dark and I'm not completely happy with how the girl is turning out; however I 'd welcome feedback on how to improve any/all aspects of the image.


[Edit: Progress pics.]

[Sunny]

it actually is amazing but the girls face is the one part that bugs me. Maybe she isnt supposed to be pretty at all, if she is then i suggest finding a reference of a pretty girl and reworking it. everything else looks awesome!

[wylielise]

...the girls face is the one part that bugs me.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions, Sunny. Much as I hate to backpedal, I think I need to go all the way back to the pencils & reference and rework her from there.

[ZombieMariachis]

I agree with Sunny. Other than that this is pretty great! Awesome colors!

[wylielise]

Updated the original post with progress pics. Redrew the girl from scratch; I like it a lot better now and can't believe I wasted as much time as I did trying to repaint the original into some semblance of presentability. Moral of the story: it's faster to start over than to fix something that wasn't right to begin with.

[TinyBird]

I don't know if you're going to tackle this while rendering the tentacles, but what bothers me is that the placement of some saturated/bright (whichever is the correct term here) kinda pushes the elements forward when the drawing doesn't support that and kinda steal the spotlight from the characters. The one tentacle right next to the guy's shoulder is the biggest offender here, as the larger bright areas push it even more forward than the front part of the tentacle (because the suction cups are larger, thus making them seem a bit brighter) especially considering it's behind the critter's head and I feel like I should concentrate to the guy's head rather than the tentacle, but my eyes keep going back to it.

Overall I do have this feeling that I don't really know where to look, or where you or the image wants me to look. There's lots of lighters spots all over the image and lots of stark contrasts in places where I don't see stuff worth looking at, like one contrast is concentrated on the white line and guy's dark shoulder (wit the white-dark-white stripe created by the lineart and the highlights) so it shines like a beacon from there, but his head and its surroundings are somewhat muted and downplayed. I mean the values of the head area work pretty nicely but the brighter colours of the monster's mouth kinda "blur" or flatten the area to my eyes, meaning that the shoulder and the monster's teeth grab my attention before his face.

[Sunny]

she looks good except the nose. you really shouldnt put much detail into girls noses. they need to be soft and femanine. shes coming along though!

[wylielise]

Overall I do have this feeling that I don't really know where to look, or where you or the image wants me to look.

Glad you caught this for me. I felt like something wasn't right but didn't know how to place it - that's what I get for skipping the thumbnails/value studies on this one. I've started rendering the tentacles, and I'm trying to address the focus issue as I go. I realize that I've now created a sort of weird longline tangent between his shoulder and the tentacle; I'll have to fix this.

you really shouldnt put much detail into girls noses. they need to be soft and femanine.

As a hawk-nosed lady myself, I take affront and refuse to mend my ways! Just kidding. (Not about my nose, though. It's genuinely hideous.)