Mailer WIP- Critiques wanted

[nothing-to-see-here]

Could have sworn I submitted this...hmmm

Anyway, I've been working on this mailer for a while and I felt it was time to get opinions on what I'm not seeing. So I'm looking for critiques.
There are a few things I'm aware that need to be fixed (tangent on Soldiers head, Elf girl is my next to work on, tunnel bricks).

This image is sized for a book cover, the background is really the only solid sized part at this time. You can see the black book line in the Lighting Plan. I will probably resize everything a bit once rendering is all done with.

Attached you can see the B/W WIP, the original lighting plan (with book lines) and my rough colour plan.

First time posting here, and I look forward to hearing your guys comments and becoming a part of this community.

[Havok Reed]

Quite an interesting piece you have here. My first thoughts at first glance is the perspective seems off. What's throwing it off for me is the guy right behind her and the brick arches. I think we should be able to see the undersides of the arches. Also the guy behind her, I feel like he's just too big and that hes pointing the gun at the viewer and not her. I think if you shrunk him down a bit, about to the point where the muzzle of the gun falls behind her head, it will look a little better.

Another thing, try cropping out the entire left side if the image. I think that it looks a little stronger without the left side. Just something to try.

[nothing-to-see-here]

Thanks, I'll fiddle around with his size a little bit, he really feels a bit too big to me as well compared to everyone else, even when I think about him being seen from a slightly lower angle. He does seem a bit off. The gun comment I have heard as well, so I will tweak that a little bit. I just want to make sure it is noticeable as a gun and not just hide it behind her head though.

As for the left side of the image, no can do. This only works as a whole for the plan I have for it.

I'll see about the archway as well. That wall in particular I may have allowed to dictate too much while not being as cohesive to the perspective, since I want the wall (and the middle part in particular) to be a solid piece of the book cover design.

This is why I love photoshop so much, it's so easy to keep elements separate and to tweak them well after the fact.

Thanks again.

[Giacomo]

Not to rain on your parade, but if you print what you have right now, you're going to get a page of close-to-solid-black with a few brighter "hot spots" on the two figures to the right. (FYI: my monitor IS calibrated.) If you're really going to use this as a promotional piece, I'd strongly suggest you go back to the line-art stage (which looks OK on your Tumblr, although the image you posted is very small) and start from scratch on the rendering, being *much* more analytical about using value to create volume and move the viewer's eye around the image.

Also, that female elf's face sells OK in the line-art version, but in the rendered version she seriously looks like Cosmo Kramer. If that wasn't your intent, you should probably repaint it.

[Aceoko]

I think there is too much going on, I don't know what to concentrate on or what I am supposed to be concentrating on. Everything is painted with equal importance for example, the corpse's hand sticking out stands out as much as the woman, if not more. The woman looks a little comical, sort of like "oh god, they're behind aren't they?", she also looks extremely tiny, might be your intention though. The man nearest to us seems to be at a weird perspective too.

[Venger]

Decide on your focus and make sure that's what we look at.
At the moment you're rendering everything - we don't need to see all the bricks, it's flattening the image.
Knock them back and pick out a few (it's becoming your primary focus)

The primary focus - the elf and pistol dude, everything else should support and guide our eyes to them.


Background figure placement is ok, if a little posed - though again pick out one and suggest the rest (the human brain is good a filling details we can't see) again its dependant on your lighting, don't have them competing with the primary.

Your foreground figures are problematic - there's not enough tension in them.
The pistol guy is huge and very static.
The 'crouching' elf (for a while I thought she was lying down - I mistook part of the foreground elements as part of her leg) needs more work (you lost something with the new face)
You also have too many foreground elements - it's interfering with the primary focus (the elf). Show one and implicate the rest.

See quick op:

[nothing-to-see-here]

Thanks guys, I have plenty to think about now. It is such a drastic change to get comments from other artists that aren't people I know.
I'll post updates later on when I work out what changes I think will work best.

Really nice quick sketch Venger. Thats a skill I do need to work on.
Makes me wish I had more people around to bounce ideas off in the pre planning stages around here.