A door in the woods (Finished!)

[Noah Bradley]

Another illustration for my class. Attempting to get a handle on digital painting. I guess this would be my first digital illustration done in color which I've actually attempted to finish. Definitely some aspects of digital that I'm liking.

I'd love crits on this. It's by no means done yet, but I've still got a couple days to work on it (not to mention all the other homework to do in that time... *sigh*). Thanks everyone!

[McLean]

hey man, did a paintover to see what would happen. The paintover really reflects my own personal taste, but hey, maybe there's something in there that you'd wanna incorporate!

i warmed up the foreground and cooled off the back ground to seperate the two, in addition to lightening up the back ground. as it was, the background had darks just as dark as the foreground. atmospheric perspective would dictate that that contrast would be lower in the background. Also, tried to just push more color, and played a little with the shapes of the trees. What i've done is by no means an end-all crit- I mean, green light? the sun isn't green! Anyway, yeah, so much of this is up to personal preference. Hope it helps man!


EDIT: Ha! I just saw that you commented on my piece as well, thanks bud! What Karma!

[Sidharth Chaturvedi]

Not bad at all. Maybe a bit dark, but I think it can work. The problem I'm seeing is that it doesn't look like the figure has the same horizon line as the rest of the area- Draw the one-point lines and move the door down accordingly. It'll also eliminate the weird flattening that's going on around her head and the door (I can't really figure out why that's happening- looks like the kind of thing that happens with a tangent, except I don't see one). Other than that, I really like the figure and mood in this.

-Sid

[SMILEFACE]

i think the flattening is caused because the ground plain is slanted down toward our right an because the door is open slightly and is not in the same perspective i think this is a really cool pic an if McLean's and Sidharth Chaturvedi's advise was applied it would be really wicked' cant wait to see it finished

[Noah Bradley]

McLean: Oh man, thanks so much! Fantastic paintover. Shows so many ways for me to improve my piece. Not too sure about your crazy green light, but other than that I love what you did. Definitely gonna try to implement most of what you did there. Thanks, man.

Sidharth Chaturvedi: Thanks for the input. I'll try to fiddle with the head/door area to get that working better. It's certainly flattening a bit there.

Grandmassa Mr. Spect: Thanks man, the perspective does seem to be getting a little wonky. I'll try to tighten that up and see if I can get it to read a little better.

[Noah Bradley]

Alright, here's the progress for the day (spent most of the day on other projects). Still got tomorrow evening to wrap things up, so more crits would be great.

[masque]

A very interesting and appealing image, the color and lighting is very well-handled. But the figure nagged at me, as it seems to not be "in" the picture space as solidly as it might, and she seems to have some rather rubbery anatomy as well. I did a cut & modify paintover on her to address these observations:



The main changes are in the hips and shoulders, giving them a more natural tilt given her stride. I also repositioned the leading foot as it seemed to me she was doing a bit of a drunkard's walk, and tweaked the arms a bit.

The markup on the adjusted figure is how I interpret the perspective -- not a lot of hard clues in the image, but it "looks" fairly close to me. The figure and the setting seem to have different horizons, as mentioned, and this has a tendency to make it look as if she's leaning forward. Adjusting the stance has helped some, I think, but it needs more than I can do with cut and modify.

[Giacomo]

Good picture! I loove the atmosphere and the rendering of the woman's flesh—very expertly done.

If I had one major critique, it'd be that the woman is tangent to the bottom of the picture—which I just find unbelievably annoying compositionally. If it were me, I'd add about 25% at the bottom of the image.

Also, what masque said. There's a lot of stuff off by about ten percent, but the two things that leap out at me are 1) if her hips are swinging as much as they are, her shoulders need to be tilted the opposite direction (contrapposto) and 2) there need to be a lot more cues on the ground plane to indicate perspective—right now there's the woman, the door, and a whole lot of undefined dead space. (Maquette render attached.)

Normally, I'd consider such stuff to be nitpicking, but I suppose the extremely simple composition makes it important to get the basic elements working extremely right.

[Noah Bradley]

Thanks so much masque and Giacomo. The input is invaluable.

Really wish I had more time to work on this thing, but it's that time again: deadline! Probably gonna go and get a nice print of it tomorrow before class.

Just curious about anyone's opinion: do you think it'd be good to keep working on this piece and try to get a nice portfolio addition out of it, or just move on to the next one and learn from this?

Here's the final:



Thanks again for all the crits along the way. It improved soooo much thanks to those crits. Y'all are great!

[Neolight]

There's always room for a little refinement, but I think you've ended up with a pretty strong piece here. Figure is great.