Oracle

[Vylla]

Work for a prompt on CGhub. I'd love any feedback and/or critiques on this one. It's probably 25% done, but the guts are all there. Wanted to get any obvious problems sorted before I proceed.

[Mr. Corlan]

It's unclear where the light is coming from. Is it coming from behind the figure? Or is he/she glowing from within? Your light source(s) should have a clear direction.

As someone mentioned in your sketchbook (but not strong enough in my opinion) you're WAY overdoing the glow effects. When in doubt, don't do it at all, you can always add a little in later.



Watch your proportions, some of the upper arms are way too short.

Think about adding some elements that move forward and backward in space to give your piece more depth. Right now the figure is very flat and there's not a lot of volume to the environment either.

[Vylla]

Hey there, thanks for taking the time to crit this. Here's where I am now. The first is where I was before I read your critique, the second is some changes I made to try to correct somethings.



The light is supposed to be emanating from within the character as well as there being some physical aura around the head. It's supposed to be a demi-god sorta deal and the glow was my attempt at emphasizing that sort of like a halo.

I had some reference initially of a torch in a comparable space, which was I was using for lighting, and the light seemed pretty uniform in the immediate area. At your suggestion I've tried it pull it in tighter around the character and the closest walls. Going to go back in and darken the crevices as appropriate.

My worry now is that, after pulling the aura glow back the light will make less sense. I don't know where that happy medium would be. If you, or anyone has any further advice or recommendations on materials for lighting I'd love to know about them. I looked around myself and what I could find was very general.

Adjusted the pose in the arms for more overlap. Somehow it turned into Kirk!pose. Might have to adjust that, or just laugh at the unintentional reference, not sure yet.

Added some volume to he pedestal and moved some rocks on the left back for breathing room.

Plan on fixing some of the parallel lines happening in the rocks with the arms and rooting the character better into the pedestal. Finalizing the hands too, the only one I'm happy with is the right middle hand.

Will probably be adding more bone pieces around the arms and more small cracks with that turquoise color, and scaling the tail as well.

Any more pointers would be much appreciated.

[Elwell]

I preferred the more iconic arm pose. The new set looks out of place/character with the others.
There's a danger to looking for crits too early in the process, as much as in waiting too long. I'd like to see the whole thing developed more.

[Giacomo]

There's a danger to looking for crits too early in the process, as much as in waiting too long. I'd like to see the whole thing developed more.

More specifically: there's a lot of dodgy or ambiguous stuff going on with the figure....why is her neck so long and why are her eyes so high up on her forehead? Are those actual skulls attached to her chest or are they tattoos? Is that her hair or is she wearing a hood? I'm also not really understanding the spatial relationship of the figure to the rock she's sitting on. And so on and so on. If I was art directing this, I'd say 1) find some photo reference for the pose and 2) do a fairly tight line drawing to get the contours working more convincingly.

[Giacomo]

(double post deleted)