Alice In Wonderland: Help Please :)

[JonoKoi]

Hey Viewers, First time post here.
I really need some help on this image, its for a friend for their birthday.
I was wondering if you could help me on lighting and composition or if any features should stand out more or be a focal point.
I want to capture the girl in the bottom right (alice) - to make her feel scared and cautious about the path ahead. Along with the overwhelming castle in the distance.
let me know what you think, I have only been working on this for a few hours.
Thanks
Jono

[Katoji]

Hi There!

Hopefully in this last week you've continued to work on this.

I think it would be helpful to you to go back a step in production. Instead of working a lot more on this value sketch, I think you should go back and work on a tight line art. Start with line, no shading. Define everything--the water, the rocks, whatever that shape is at the base of the waterfall, cobble stone, bushes--whatever.

Consider taking out the street lamps for the moment--they drastically effect the scale and not in a good way. Instead, let the figure of Alice give us the sense of scale. But to do that, she's got to be accurately proportioned. Find some reference pictures for Alice's silhouette.Throwing her in as a quick sketch element simply won't help, she's not accurate and that really does matter. To my eye, she looks like she's on cliff. Down below is a waterfall with a path across it. But you might have drawn this thinking she's just a few feet away.

After you get the line art figured out, then you can move to rendering form. The reason I say that is because you have a very complex lighting situation going here--and light is how you describe form. It's going to be very hard to guess and get it right.

First, since this scene is at night, set the value of that night sky. Right now it's really not very dark, in fact there are no real dark values. Try to add some in. Use a layer set to multiply on top of this to quickly block in the darkness. Use more than one. I would put one in for the sky. One in for the mushroom town, erasing where the light falls.

You'll also need to find some photo reference so that you can understand what landscape does as it goes into in the distance. In the day time, the atmospheric perspective makes the distant vista lighter in value and cooler in color. However, this is at night. And it's back lit. Not easy to simply guess and have it come out right. That why I suggest looking up some reference.

The Moon and street lamps. That might be problematic. Multiple light sources can be difficult. I would expect that the moon and the street lamps would have different types of light--the cool tones of the moon and the warm tones of the lamps. Again, pretty challenging idea. Reference will help out with that too.

So. My advice: render this whole scene in a full range of black and white values as tight as you can---- after you've spent some real time in constructing the scene. Work out all your value, scale, and proportion problems in this stage. Look for reference. Then come back for suggestions on color.

Good Luck with it!