W.I.P Phoenix commission

[JudgementPanda]

Hey everyone, got a pic I'm working on for a client and would like to know what yall think. The client basically wanted a blonde girl dressed in red reaching up to pet her phoenix. The face is a little funky and I'm having trouble narrowing down exactly whats wrong with it. Lay it on me!

[Star Eater]

Some things

Girls body/anatomy is so very wrong. Legs are different sizes, the arm that's
reaching up is terribly proportioned and positioned. Face at this stage is
very manly and malformed. (Even for a dude)

How is that phoenix suspended in the air? The structure of its feet
make no sense. Right now its head is completely skew and flat (how
are we able to see both eyes in relation to its skull and position of the beak?)

Is the phoenix burning/made of fire? Reaching out to pet your phoenix
is a funny concept to me, but that's the clients prerogative. However
I see no indication of the light/heat emanating from the bird.

Phoenix looks like its erupting entirely from the top left corner of the page but
has been awkwardly cramped to fit the position of page itself.

Did you do any pre-planning or have any references for the bird and the girl?

[Hexokinase]

I'm not digging the current color palette. Don't feel the intense heat that one should around a giant bird made of fire. Check out some of the official MTG art for Chandra to see what I mean (and for an idea for color direction).

[arenhaus]

Desaturate it and look at it in grayscale. It will show you the values without the color to confuse you.

As an added trick, convert it to 5 shades of gray. If it doesn't work in 5 shades of gray, you probably need to rethink your value composition.

[JudgementPanda]

Thanks Everyone for your comments. I'll get on the corrections and post what I have after that.

[JudgementPanda]

Allright heres another pass at it. I change the ref I was using to a different one thats fits the comp a little bit better. Also I redrew the face and tried to correct the proportions (let me know what is still wrong). Changed the color and fire of the phoenix to resemble real fire more and tried to make the fire appear to be hotter. Darkend the background some to help the phoenix pop out a bit more aswell. Let me know what yall think and thanks again.

[Star Eater]

Too...much...dodge...it burns alright.

I don't think you need to use the software effects. I think you have the
ability to generate that heat effect on your own with just proper use of color.

The new position of the bird appears even further away than it did originally.

[arenhaus]

Too...much...dodge...it burns alright.

I see what you did there.

[JudgementPanda]

Heres another update. Still trying to address the fire and have it not "burn" so much XD. Tell me what yall think.

[Star Eater]

Personally I think its an improvement.

But you should really think about the position of the phoenix. Is it hovering?
The flapping of those wings would be causing some serious draft, having it
sit in the air like that still looks awkward.

[sone_one]

i agree with hexokinase... for a phoenix imo thats the palette you should aim for...

(dirty op)


as soon as you add cool colors in the midtones this falls apart... you can (and probably should) make it cooler where the effect is not as strong ... and in the highlights. all in all theres only so many values to use, so using the hue contrast helps in pushing the lightest lights if its a complementary hue... the hottest highlights i added are actually a turquoise-blue-ish white instead of a pure white.

[JudgementPanda]

First off thank you all for your excellent comments they have been a big help. So reworked it a little and do you mean something more like this........

[LordLouis]

Could you fix her head? There are at least 4 illustrations of a head in exactly that position in Bridgman's Guide to Drawing from Life AND Heads and Hands AND The Human Machine. You could use them to see the masses and how the planes of the face move with the head mass when you tilt upwards and sideways.

[JudgementPanda]

All right I'm about to wrap this up its almost the deadline but this is what I got. What y'all think?

[Heyriel]

The head still seems strange in my opinion. Also do the shadows/highlights still not match up with the light source (neither in direction nor intensity). -*sone-one made that cool paint-over so you might as well use his advice. And you have pretty much ignored *Star_Eaters repeated comments about the position of the phoenix.
I think overall it's loads better (especially the palette and figure) than the first version but could have been improved even more had you followed the advice more closely and not been afraid to completely re-do parts of it (namely the face, phoenix and her left arm). :/

[Marcky Marq]

I dont know how much time you have or if you can ask for an extension but Heyriel and everyone he mentioned is right, try to follow their advice a little bit more closely. I would also like to point out that you have made HUGE improvements from your first drawing and it does look much better. I feel she still has a manly body, you would want to make her curvier more appealing the face a bit off still, maybe fixing the eyes. At least for the sake of Star Eater and the rest of us have it perching on something, put a rock or a piece of wood in its talons so it isnt just hovering. The position of its wings makes it look like it is trying to land- here is an image to kind of get what I believe we are trying to emphasize to you. The idea that the bird shouldnt be hovering

http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/da...anding_866.jpg

Hope this Helps!

[tobbA]

A few things... Not sure if they were mentioned before or not.

- I'd like to crop this a bit on the right side, because I don't feel like we're getting anything from that extra space and the character is a bit awkwardly positioned in the middle.

- You have two light sources, one from the bird and one from the sky/surroundings. Since they're both so strongly colored, there's really no reason for the skin of the person, which seems pretty pale by the looks of it, to take on anything but the colors of these light sources.

- Since you have no hard lights in your image, you also won't get any hard shadows. And their color would be cool since that's the color of your secondary light.