Teleport tester _ looking for crits and suggestions

[G@m]

Yesterday i finished my entry for the chow number 306, teleport tester, today after staring at it for a while i've found some parts that i really dislike, his right arm and leg.
I did a quick paintover to figure out what was bothering me, what do you think? would moving the arm and leg make the image better? I'd really like to hear your opinion on what i could do to fix in order to obtain a better final result.

Before & After

[TinyBird]

Hmm, personally I'd say that even if he's bored to death at his job, it'd make sense for him to at least look at the test going, it took me waaay too long to even notice the mouse/rat thing there, especially since it's totally surrounded by glowing, bright cyan screens that hog the attention away. And in similar manner if you're going to design a character that has half missing of him, showing more of it really wouldn't hurt, to make it clearer to the viewer, and especially if you're having him look away with his eyes anyway, turning his head even more or make him twist around the chair wouldn't be that troublesome to the pic I think.

I think moving the arms depends on what you want to show, I think moving them makes the pose bit more interesting, but he doesn't look as bored and seems like he's doing a presentation to someone about the porn he' s watching since his other hand is pointing towards that and like mentioned the screen is more noticeable than the test going on, where as I think the original pose would have worked even better if it were more exaggeratedly bored and floppy. He's more awkwardly between lazing around and trying to sit straight in the first one, which just to me comes off as stiff.

Also the foreshortening doesn't work that well in the leg, his upper leg looks overly short to me especially seeing how far from the seat's edge the metal knee is in comparison to the flesh and bone knee.
Aaand if he has only one real foot, why does he have the opposite foot's flip-flop? Or does he specifically need a shoe only on the metal foot?

[G@m]

Tinybird thank you for the crit, it made me realize just how much more i should've thought about the story behind this picture before trying to take it to final. I've noted all your points and i'll be working on implementing those, i'll probably keep his head towards the viewer(because i'm lazy and i kinda like it) and give the idea he's speaking to someone while pointing at the mouse with the robot hand, at that point it should look like he forgot to turn off the porn when someone else entered the room. I'll also lower the brightness of the screen to make the mouse pop out more.
The flip flop should be for his normal foot, i guess i'll try to make it clearer in the next wip.

[Stoat]

Really nicely drawn and finished, by the way. And it's a fun-horrible picture idea.

But, yeah...there was a lot that confused me. It took me a while to read his body, and then I wondered how he was getting by with half a trunk and head (missing limbs I can understand). I get the joke that he's so bored he's watching porn, but it's hard for my eye not to go to the actual porn (that there's biology at work, no doubt). Also, no matter how bored I got with work, I don't think I could turn up in tighty whities and flip-flops -- does he work from home?

[TinyBird]

Though you have to tell me what his undies read, I can see the text "half" but the other is jumbled and now I can't stop wondering about it!

[G@m]

ok, i think im almost ready to render the finer details, i've changed the brightness of the screens and added a slight blur to the porn ( i think the hard edges were too attractive to the eyes, and i want people to notice it only after a while ), modified the pose of the mechanical hand, moved the right leg a tiny bit and last but not least i threw out the old flip flop and bought this new one. The pen on his hand is causing a slight tangent with the lab coat, but it shouldn't be too hard to avoid that.

Stoat. the mistery of science keeps him alive, i like to think that half of his body is kinda out of tune with this universe or something along those line, there but not there, he still has full access to his brain. Don't ask me science stuff! Since i wanted him to be the stereotypical genius type, i assume that those who pay him don't mind him going around like that as long as they get to use his genius for their ideas once in a while. Thank you for your opinion, its really interesting hearing what other people make out of this picture.

Tinybird. Half&Half, i know, lame... but i wanted to add some visual interest to the elastic band and apparently it kind of works

[Wretched]

Damn, I was hoping it said "Half Assed"...

Not that I mean to infer that there is anything halfassed in this work, I think its very well executed. Great take on the concept! I think it is feeling more balanced now after the last pass, though I do have to agree with TinyBird about wanting to see the what the inner half of his "condition" looks like, the anomaly doesn't face the viewer anywhere and does affect the initial read on him. Not that you have to stretch the imagination terribly to understand what is happening, just might have been more evident. Otherwise, awesome.

[Stormslegacy]

I really like it, it's so strange! The concept is really interesting and this is really well done.

The one place I think that it doesn't read as well is the face, because of the nature of faces it reads as a distorted profile-view rather than half missing...maybe as tinybird said, just a little more towards us would have improved it, but it's pretty good as-is.

The blur on the porn etc. helped a lot! It's no longer the first thing I'm drawn to.

[justa]

I've gotta say to me the porn doesn't bring anything to the image, because it doesn't look like he was paying any more attention to it than he is the mouse on the screen, and it still draws the eye away from him. You could replace it with another graph and it would not affect your story at all. The other thing that is losing me is the metal arm and leg. I'm assuming he is himself a failed teleport experiment? What is the metal attached to, and if he has a leg and arm, why not a torso - then it would be realistically functional. Right now I get caught up in wondering how it could be functional instead of enjoying your story. One last small thing, right now his head looks like a flat sheet, not 3 dimensional, although I can't quite put my finger on why. His pupil is so small as well that you can't really see where he was looking.

Hope that is helpful in some way

D'Arcy

[Kiera]

Fun idea, cool execution .
The tangent between the fold of his jacket and the pen confused me a bit though.
Also it took me some time to understand that the ball next to his ankles belongs to the chair.
Oh yeah, and the porn, no clue about that - I don't get it and it distracted me from the rest.

[Black Spot]

There's too much blue vying for our attention. If you changed either the rat or the porn to maybe pink, it would work a bit better.

[Kolbenito]

Have you thought about adding something to the missing side of his head to make the shape read better? I got that we are only seeing half his head right away, but it still has this sort of paper-thin seen from an oblique angle thing going on. Although probably correct, my eye hangs on it a bit. Like what you did with the arms and legs, some sort of prosthetic or maybe a glass half face or something.

I kinda think the porn would be more interesting and probably a bigger laugh if we saw enough of it to to immediately recognize he is watching porn on one of the monitors off that are partially off screen - without it drawing the eye up over the guy and the mice immediately as it does now.

Great job on the idea and rendering, it's a cool piece.

[G@m]

Wretched: hope you don't mind, but i changed the text to half hassed, its really hard to make out but it made me laugh
Stormslegacy: thank you, and i can see where you are coming from with the comment about the face looking more like a distorted profile
Justa: yep, he's supposed to have tried and failed at succesfully teleporting himself, i didn't want to add a torso because i thought that making that part as robotics would be kinda useless, but now that you point it out, i guess bending would be quite difficult without that side of the torso
Kiera: yeah the chair design is quite bad è_è i'll try to change it a bit, and point taken on the porn
Black Spot: i tried adding some pink, can't get it to work, but i'll try to vary the light / color scheme in that area, i actually went batshit crazy with the blues in this piece
Kolbenito: Thank you for the comment, right now i'm toying with an idea, to try and describe better what happened to him and that should also help with the face problem.


What about now? i've flattened the "porn", i think what was attracting the eye so much was the level of details and contrast i had there, even with the blur. Added some kind of energy something going on in the missing half of body, not sure if it works but that was the only solution that came to mind without having to change the whole picture
I still have to work out the details but i think the image should work now, i hope.

[Kolbenito]

Cool idea for the missing side of his body, for me that does the trick for making his head feel 3D. Also what you have done with the monitors pops the mice forward and really helps direct attention to the experiment. The change on the pen works well. Good changes.

Lol, see you changed the text on his briefs. Good call!

[justa]

MUCH better! Really liking this more now; as an aside the porn is as eye-attracting as the red bull - i.e. something you catch only on more detailed looking, which is how it should be.

Cheers

D'Arcy