Diego de Almeida's Portfolio review

[Diego de Almeida]

Hello my name is Diego de Almeida, I'm a 26 years old freelance illustrator and concept artist.

I'm graduate in tradittional painting where my research was focused in the study of painting process developed in Brazil at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

My goal is to become a concept artist in the games and movie industry, working with character and creature design, I also would like work with book covers and card games.

Critics and advice are more than welcome

Thanks!

[Diego de Almeida]

I hope you enjoy.

[Smarty]

Hi,

First I want to say that the poses are generally strong with clear action. My main critique of your work as a whole is colour. Everything seems to be in monochromatic with maybe a couple of harmonious accents. This tends to leave everything a little muddy. To make them seem more full colour I recommend using something a little more complementary and mixing your value scale from them. For instance a lot of your work has this orange/yellow hue. I think this would work better if you cooled your shadows towards the blue spectrum (imagine your mixing paint, not just picking colours). This should also improve your skin tones too.

Also the lighting on most of your images seems a little too ambient and non specific. Your strongest image (minus the colour) is number 2. This is because you've used the shadows to take you through the piece. Also, personally, I really like the burnt out shadow on the monsters peck. You should definitely bring that to more of your work. Remember, you need to develop your own visual language!

[zy.]

Hey Diego de Almeida--

I wasn't planning on commenting, but after I looked at your thread I went home and found I couldn't stop thinking about some of your images, and they've been popping up in my mind for the past several days. Particularly the one last image with the red flag. They stood out to me, and so I'm back to make it known!

A disclaimer: I am recently returned to art, and certainly not of your caliber on-the-whole. So my opinions are not by any means "expert", and you should think about them critically before acting on them. Decide if they work for you...

My general impression: As mentioned above, your images had an impact that stayed with me, and there is a lot to be said about this fact. I really enjoy your compositions, if I had to describe them in a single word it would be "cinematic". They have strong action and a really nice interplay between line leading the eye around the image, and color leading the eye. This works to move the viewer's attention from one corner to another, while also making every component leading the eye interesting and different. Masterful. This is a strong skill of yours, its the "red" flag and I both admire it and am inspired by it.

However, while you sometimes hit the nail on the head in terms of line crispness and color-- really getting bold-- there are several pieces in here that I could call "muddy" in parts. I think there is a contrast between strong and soft line that works very well in some pictures, but isn't present in others. Let me get into more detail with each piece:

Specific thoughts (pictured numbered from top to bottom):

Picture 1: This is a great piece to sum up the things I like about your work. The diagonal movement is elegant and easy to follow. The eye would fall off the right half of the page quickly, as both the sword and cape cary the eye in that direction (the cape actually works well in both directions), were it not for the strong illumination and light color of the fighting soldier, which brings the eye back to the left. This is exactly what I mean when I say you use both color and line to move the eye around a piece. The very crisp well defined flames of the daemon contrast well with the soft background. Perhaps some of this same crispness can be brought to the lower left side as well. Really defining the lines of the soldior? I want to see this bigger, the details look fascinating.

Picture 2: I find this to be your weakest piece. That's not to say there aren't great points about it: the action is well defined, the movement and momentum is there. Anatomy is great. But it feels muddy. There are no sharp lines, with the exception of some of the smaller blood drops there are no defined shapes. The ogre in particular feels soft-- in part I think because the lighting seems ambiguous. The illumination is from behind, so I would expect more illumination on the edges, with fill light in the parts facing us. But there seems to be a second light source coming from the front right, it's a soft light and I'm not sure where its coming from. Now, I don't *need* to know where it's coming from, but it's not bold enough to make me feel confident that its coming from anywhere, and not just light used as an excuse to add some definition.

Picture 3: I enjoy the fading of red to yellow on the diagonal, and in general enjoy your diagonally-oriented compositions. I enjoy the blocked out shadows on the ogre's face, and the use of a strong, sharp black texture on his upper shoulder (his left shoulder, our right). The scars on his lower left abdomen also have an interesting texture and feel. Not realistic per se, but interesting and dynamic. The ogre in the upper left also compliments the diagonal composition well. However, the man feels very un-finished-- he has no legs?! And while I don't mind a hovering figure, there doesn't seem to be any good reason for why he's not complete, and the space where his legs should be is actually very un-interesting and distracting.

Picture 4: The man vs. ogre is incredibly cinematic here. Each drop of blood is crisp and well placed. I love the blood particularly around the knife. You don't feel it necessary to add detail to the lower face of the attacker and I really like that. The ogre's upper jaw seems to be out of perspective with the lower jaw, and that could be a small fix. Ok, now on the the woman. I'd say without the girl, this picture feels like a shot from a movie made today. The woman standing in the background looks like she is from about 1970. Style, clothes, pose. I'm not sure she adds to the picture, and she captures my eye and I stick there. I just can't understand what she's doing there (and in heels?).

Picture 5: The swords and black cloth in the foreground are wonderful. The dragon appears to be rendered in an intentionally "unfinished" way, and the drama with the man is there. This picture doesn't stand out to me too much one way or another. Perhaps because it's missing a strong light source, perhaps because I'm not just a hage fan of green as a color in general (and I can't fault you for my personal taste on green!).

Picture 6: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that environments aren't your passion. It's a fine picture, but the drama, action, composition, aren't really here.

Picture 7: I LOVE this picture. It is rendered incredibly realistically. I had to do a double take. I am fascinated by the way you render shadows. Especially on the face. It's convincingly realistic, but each shadow is also a whole shape unto itself. The texture is wonderful, the left arm against the blue ocean also has a really nice quality of mixing well with the background color but still boldly standing out. The movement of the figure, and the fact that you also chose to crop the figure and fill the whole frame, also appeal to me quite a bit. This is one of the pictures I thought out after looking at your portfolio.

Picture 8: This isn't strong, but it isn't particularly weak either. I would say your cleverness with composition via the interplay between line and color doesn't really come through here. Not a lot of color.

Picture 9: I enjoy The glistening of the man's chest plate on the left side. Perhaps the child's blanket could be lighter, more illuminated, to draw the eye more to this point in the picture and also give you an opportunity to define some of the details in this region more?

Picture 10: I'm guessing this is one half of a picture, and picture 11 is the other half? Well, regardless, I really like this picture. The knight in the lower left corner shines, I mean really glows fantastically, and the crisp lines of his/her arm really do wonders. I love how the picture moves through color as we move to the upper left corner, and the shapes of all the figure complement each other nicely. My eye fallows these figures to the upper left corner, even though the arrow so strongly indicates a direction for the eye to travel, and I appreciate this fact. The flag on the upper right also brings the eye back to the elf, which completes the image well. And the flag, being very crisp, stands out against the soft background. The slight diagonal of the composition (almost curved in at the top and bottom corner), make the whole picture very interesting.

Picture 11: Yep, this is the picture that got stuck in my head. And I think I'm actually going to do a color and composition study with it. The red flag does everything I want my pictures to do: It is incredibly bold and daring (it takes courage to include something like this) and really makes the picture. It stands out so strongly against the yellow sand whites behind it. The movement of color throughout the whole picture is gradual and elegant, and the red flag rips through all of that in a fantastic, violent sort of way. The use of red in the figure holding the flag, as wel as his arm gesturing in the same direction, pulls the eye down to the lower left, so that now I find myself exploring his arm, and the reds in his costume. This "introduces" me to the softer browns, and that pulls my eye into the background, exploring the details of the figures behind. And just when my eye begins to wander, BAM! Red flag, and suddenly the color of the sky, and the drama of the lighting really stand out. love it. Just love it.

Thoughts on Smarty's comments: First, I love monochromatic, and to a degree I think this is just a matter of tast. Especially in the last two pictures (which are actually one picture) I think you use a diversity of colors, and am satisfied with your choices. It does seem you default to a kind of soft burnt umber brown, but I think in a lot of instances it works, and in places where it doesn't work I've tried to be clear about that. Smarty and I also differ on what we think your strongest piece is. Interesting information for you to chew on a I guess However, I would say there is a lot of uniqueness in your work, and to me, you do have a strong personal style.

Ok. So there you go Thank YOU for sharing these. They've been a pleasure to look at and I had fun writing this review. Can't wait to see your work out in the wider world!

~Zy.

[Diego de Almeida]

Thank you for the comments of both! I will calmly assess and separate what is relevant.
I am really sorry for the delay in replying,but I'm with a lot of work here and I've been traveling.
Zy, I am very happy to know that the images stayed on your mind, they are made for that and I thank you for the time that you devoted talking about each piece.

One more time, thanks for the comments, they are always welcome! ^^