Chase in the Prehistoric Marshes

[gfxtwin]

EDIT: Actually, the title should be "survival in the prehistoric marshes". whoops!

Need advice on how to make it better. This picture takes away a lot of the detail, but I don't want to stretch the page.

[Giacomo]

Nice piece. The animals all feel like they've been cut-and-pasted from a scene with different lighting, though. If it were me I'd use a much higher key overall (and also make the "dark" and "light" areas on the dinosaurs much more contrasty.) Some reflected light coming in from the right would probably help too.

[gfxtwin]

Update

EDIT:

[Giacomo]

Update

Where?

[smuli]

I like the photographic details for this kind of illustration and the overall composition. There are some minor things that need fixing in my opinion though.

I made a quick paintover, here's what I did:
-Moved the tail of the beast on the left so that it isn't cut by the edge and moved the frontmost beast so that the horns and leg don't touch the border. This also fixed the almost tangent of the frontmost beast's beak and the horn of the other one.
-Changed the position of the frontmost beast's head so that they aren't so similar
-Added some exaggerated fog behind the front beast so that the viewer can make them out better. The wavy white line being continuous at the far right is especially confusing.
-I darkened the levels with an adjustment layer with a round gradient as mask so that the edges got darkened. I think it added more dynamism. One thing that bothers me in the original is that the clouds have 100% white in all parts of the sky, which gives a kind of flat look. You could've reserved it to the part close to the sun.

[humboldt squid]

So uh, where's the marsh? They appear to be in a mountain stream filled with glacial till rather than an a marsh.

[gfxtwin]

I don't know if marsh is the right word. Maybe the correct term is "wetlands". It's a location similar to this:

[Venger]

It all depends on what you're after?
Is this an action piece or a descriptive piece?. Do we need all the details?

Because you've rendered everything you've made it quite flat - push your lighting a lot more. Drop things into shadow, suggest things rather than fully render.
Quick scribble below.
To be honest you need to do lots of thumbnails - I wouldn't even chose the OP I've done for you as a good thumbnail.
Everything needs moving up.

[Velocity Kendall]

i agree with the above totally. heres my 2c. i know even less about dino (rhino?.. as in googling running rhino?..) anatomy than i do human, so grains of salt at the ready..

[gfxtwin]

smuli : I like the bent tail (it makes the image flow better, visually) but unfortunately that change and the others are much less scientifically accurate than what I had before.

Venger: Love the contrast. It looks like a completely different setting. Like a river surrounded by trees during a storm. I never think of doing thumbnails where everything is all sketched down at once, but I will in the future. This advice was very helpful, thank you.

Velocity: The angle is much more dramatic and an I agree it's an improvement. The splashes too. Something about the contrast makes it look better from a compositing standpoint (and a bit less cartoonish). That said, why have you broken my poor therapod's arm you brute!? But seriously, good advice as usual.

[gfxtwin]

okay, this does seem to be an improvement to me. More dramatic angle plus more scientifically accurate, I hope. What do you guys think?