Dreamworld

[Jikan]

OK, I finished more or less this damn CG. It was really a lot of work, since I am not used to do total CGs (erasing the original outilne). And it's been a pain in the ass, last CG I do like this in some time, really, it's exhausting and most times not fun at all. Watercolors are better, certainly, yet of course not suitable for the mood of this picture.

Well, this is the result so far, but I'm ready to change anything you see that looks wrong. Any unsuitable color, any misplaced highlight, any exaggerate glow or whatever you people find out.

Oh, the sea is horrible. It's really a photograph modified to fit there, I don't know how to make a nice looking sea with moon reflection and all, and I'd like to change that. Any tips?

[Zynic]

Hey there

Well, I'm no good at digital stuff either, so I don't think that I can be of that much help here, but I'll give it a shot.

Most things( like the tail and the torso for example ) are looking very flat as it is now, and I would say that it is because you're only using the same colour with very few tone-variations.
Try to use a few more colours and tones to model the surface as if it were in 3d, instead of 2d.

Keep it up!

Oh, just one more thing.
Never, ever use a photo in an illustration just because you "don't know how to make a good-looking one"
Give it a shot, and if you're not pleased with the result, give it a couple of more shots.
You won't get better unless you practise ;D

[Jikan]

Um, thanks for the help. Yes, the photo thing was pathetic, I tried again with some photoshop experimentation, trying this and that. I also fixed some shadows to make a higher contrast and make the figure look less flat, and tweaked the fathers, adding some more to justify the illumination. I think it looks better, only to the right of the picture the sea looks plain flat. I didn't notice this when uploading it, but it's easy to fix with clone stamp magic: I'll just clone the parts of the sea you can't see into that empty space and everything is nice.

http://www.viciojuegos.com/imagenes/...anacfinal2.jpg

[otis]

The main reason the whole piece looks flat is becuase everything is drawn that way. Reminds me of an Egyptian hieroglyph. Try drawing things with some foreshortening, overlapping and perspective. Adjusting your colors won't acomplish anything.

If these terms sound new to you, then I recommend picking up a good drawing tutorial from a class or book.There are some roaming around on this site somwhere.

[Justin.]

Biggest problems;

• Not enough reference used
• Reference used too much (background- seriously dude, wtf?)
• Composition needs MAJOR WORK.
• Too much pure black
• Too much pure white
• Too many colors for using so much pure black and pure white
• Detail too scattered, no focus
• Anatomy needs work
• No differentiation between materials, anything that has any value is all painted the same way, no illusion of differing textures, which creates
• Flatness
• No modelling of forms, no illustion of 3d, as was said before no foreshortening, no perspective.

I don't know WHY I did a paintover of this- Study some good, non-anime illustrations and how they are set up- values, colors, objects- try recreating some simplified versions of some to give you ideas. Put down the digitial; Work on your pencil skills for a year or so first.

A well composed illustration with bad anatomy can be reworked into a good illustration, a badly composed illustration will almost always stay bad, no matter how polished it gets.

And with the exception of manips or Matte painting, DON'T USE STRAIGHT PHOTOS IN YOUR WORK!!!!

[Jikan]

Geez, you people can get so harsh with your critiques. But well, I post here for that, so I shouldn't complain.

The background is a simple as I could make it. As stated before, I don't enjoy digital that much, and I knew that if I made a complicated background I'd just get bored and never finish. I realize it still looks quite flat after the color, I'll just try to apply some harder shadows like the ones you put in your overpainting, it will probably make it all much better. What kind of brush did you use, by the way? I really like the tones you put in the sky.

[Justin.]

Custom Brushes. Just make a pattern, apply some texture, viola.

And I didn't use darker shadows; I just moved the shadow placement to be more accurate.

[Jikan]

OK, let's see if it looks better now. I added some textures, I made the wall with green tones so it looked like marble, I changed some shadows to make the viewer focus a little more on the lighten areas, added some highlights, touched the sky with some pretty colors, ended with that horrible sea photograph (not too satisfied with the current result of the sea, but it's certainly better) and well...that's about it.

Oops, I notice I left some stuff I wanted to fix in the torso following your correction. Well, I'll do that tonight, I guess. As for the anatomy critiques, I reduced the biceps length a little bit, but I really don't want to define the muscles much, given the fact he's supposed to be pretty thin, which would explain why the arms look like wood sticks.



Oh, I'd like to know what's the composition problem. I used my scarce composition knowledge for this one, like well, avoiding to have the characer completly in the center, not cutting any element away, using a certain polygonal structure thing, etc. As for the fact it's a total profile, well, it's the only way I can make the whole moon-turns-into-bird thing and it's right in front of the character, as a perspective that really makes no sense, but of course, that's the whole point of the picture, I never intended the bird to look as if it's coming from the moon far away, but more as if the moon hanged in the sky was not a far away satellite, but some ball one can almost reach out and touch. Well, that idea came from a dream I had where basically the distance between the Earth and the moon changed depending on what happened...uh...it's hard to explain I think.