so..whaddayathink? :)

[tesorone]

hey, I tried designing somesort of water/fish elf character, and was wondering what you guys think of it so far? still a wip, so any suggestions on improvement or anything else is welcome!

[Grunler]

Hey, nice coral head decoration! Well, almost. It's hard to believe that little hair bun is supporting it.

I think that before you go any further, you should decide if you intend for this to be concept art or an illustration. If it's concept art, I'd ditch the background, draw out the entire figure, and run her through several designs. If it's an illustration, I'd do several thumbnails and shoot for a more engaging pose and composition. If it's both, I'd do both.

[shiNIN]

Try to draw her without clothes, using reference because you need it. The farther eye should be turned away more from this angle, we can't see both eyes similarly.

[williams73]

first a question is the black fishbone a tattoo?
I assumed it was and I also don't think that linear coloring of the arm is appropriate......in my example I did it to the extreme so you can find a middle ground maybe..... I just picked two things I saw right away that bothered me.....look forward to your progress

[tesorone]

Grunler: you're right! I started it out as a concept character piece, but then I felt like putting in a background and stuff and I felt like the pose was really boring. So I might try and do both seperately as you said Thank you! I'll fix the hair bun too haha

shiNIN: Thank you! I didn't think of it before, but I can see it now

williams73: Yes, it is a tattoo! Isn't it believable to use black for it? I understand that I probably shoudn't use a 100% black, but again isn't your example a little too bright? Or was that just to correct the position of it? But I totally agree with the arm! I'll definately try and paint a middle ground as you said. Thank you for taking your time to do a paint over

[williams73]

sure tattoo can be black but it will still follow the shape it is on and won't be 100% black in every part, the skin is dyed black so the skin shadows,middle and highlights will still be in the tattoo......

[Risaki-chan]

Hey Tesorone i really like your illustration (especially eyes) although i think you should do smth with tattoo just as williams73 said the tattoo don't look very good now black is too much of a black so i'll leave it here and maybe it will help you
the tatto should follow the curvature of her chest and have some shadows to it
Apart from that great piece! Can't wait to see it finished

[tesorone]

thank you! yes you're right, didn't really study how tattoo's actually look like, so thanks for the ref! I should probably look around the net for a while and get some more too thank you, I'll keep you posted

[Frida Bergholtz]

One thing that I thought about is her clothing. It does not seem to be under water at all. And now that I think about it there is nothing at all that suggest that this takes place under water. Gravity does not affect things like it does above water.

That the character lives under water is the most important aspect of the character design. You have to keep that in mind from start to finish. It is not enough to slap on some superficial features like green skin and fins. Well you can if you just want to make something that looks pretty. But a concept demands more than that and if you do a background it should be there to enhance and make the concept clearer.

Drawing people and objects like cloth under water is rather advanced, it takes a lot of studies and reference material to get it right. I'm not trying to discourage you from trying it. Just keep in mind that it takes planning if you never attempted it before.

I like the look of her eyes. Apart from the anatomical, issues but the green depth to them that fits the theme and looks really attractive. They remind me a little of a seals eyes.

[tesorone]

I thought about the clothing and hair too!! You're compleately right, I didn't plan anything when I made this. I just started sketching, drawing and adding and it came to this. Then I thought about stuff later, which isn't really a good method of drawing... haha. I'm not sure if I'll continue with this or just move on, but thank you for the critique!!