Chess Piece, First Post

[foco]

Ok...hello to all, I have been lurking in the shadows for a while watching all the work that you guys do in complete awe. I must be frank and say that I am a bit embarrased and intimidated to post my work along some of the masterpieces that I have seen in this threads...but I have noticed that though replies here tend to be few they are usually constructive and that is enough to get me to do it, knowing that one or two helpful comments, crits or tips will come my way...so here goes nothing.

This is a piece that I finished last night, it was drawn for a contest and the theme of it is chess. So I have a number of pawns and pawns that come together to form the rook. The bishop is riding the rook and in essense the two together make the knight. The Queen is the figure in the background. That was not exactly how I planned her to come out but time did not allow for more detail.

On this I was going for a heated mood, as in very warm, so I used quite a bit of overlays and the burning tool to get that scorched feeling, plus I ended up overlaying layers of orange to get a unified, warm tonality to it.

Tools: Photoshop 7.0, Wacom Tablet and Sakura markers for the inking which was done by hand prior to scan.



http://www.psilent1.homestead.com/files/chesspiecesm.jpg


Click here for large image (http://www.psilent1.homestead.com/files/chesspiece.jpg)

[crazybrush]

Nice work!
I love the composition and color scheme although if you want to get out of the frame, I woud only have one or two elements coming out, rather than almost all of them.
I would get rid of the "horseman" and have just the chess figures battling it out. Also, I don't quite get the girl in the background.
As far as advice, I would tell you to paint directly with adequate color and stay away from "burning tools" in Photoshop. If you bypass traditional painting and go straight to digital you will find yourself dependent on it, and that's not a good thing. To acquire this kind of skill, you have to go to the source- pencils and brushes.

When I try to give critique, I got to the points that need improving, rather than compliments. You already know the good things about your piece.

Keep it up...

[foco]

Thank you for the comment, I truly do appreciate it, and honesty is the best in these scenarios. Now that you mention the pieces coming out being too many, I see your point. It is a bit too late to update this piece since I already submited it, but certainly something to keep in mind.

As for the burning tool, I get what you mean and actually that is the way I did it. I actually colored the piece in about ten different tones from highlights to shadow (not counting the ink black), blended those and then simply used the burning too as a touch up to a few areas that needed to be darker or get that colorization that the tool only seems to create.

And the overlay I had to use that simply because when I made the concept for all the elemets, I used white light as reference, so that when I put that background in, I ran into the problem of the pieces not actually matching their setting, but a bit of tinkering with overlay layers and the burning tool actually helped quite a bit.

The queen...yeah, I know that seems to be the comment I am getting on the other forum too. I am begining to regret even including her, but this is how we learn right? :emb:

[Atomicfate]

good looking piece!

im not feeling the faded image of the woman either.

nice job though!

[DanSTC]

The woman's face in the background definately could use some work. As it is now, not only do we not have any idea who she is, but if she's supposed to be a queen, her expression tells us nothing about the scene below her. Also, the placement of her left eye is off, and her lips seem to stick out of her face instead of rolling over it, just to name a few more issues with it. If I were you, I'd spend several hours practice on head drawing.

Also, I take it the pawns are supposed to look like the Izz from Sam Keith's "The Maxx" right?

[foco]

You know, I suppose...I really do not know. I remeber that cartoon came out a long time ago while I was in high school but I never actually got to see an episode, *curses his nightime job at the time* So I can not really say if they do or not...

If they are supposed to look like anything it would just be just simple pawn pieces with arms and alien like heads...that is where I got the idea of no eyes....

[brads3d]

the character concepts are so simple that its easy for them to resemble eachother. theyre honestly not much more complex than a stickman. but yeah, you should check out the maxx. it revolutionized my opinion of mainstream comics. the womans face could probably be replaced with a chess board pattern. not sure it fits, unless its supposed to be the queen... but, she doesn't have a crown... you could probably pop some blue out of the image somewhere to give it depth, maybe some blue keylight?

[foco]

Originally posted by brads3d
the character concepts are so simple that its easy for them to resemble eachother. theyre honestly not much more complex than a stickman.

...ouch... :( but yeah...a chess piece is really not that complicated.

... but, she doesn't have a crown... you could probably pop some blue out of the image somewhere to give it depth, maybe some blue keylight?

I had not thought about that...good idea, thank you.

[Oblio]

Hey - nice one.
Where is this chess-art related contest?
Thx.

Oblio

[brads3d]

Originally posted by foco
...ouch... :(

hey, no sharp edges meant on that, just saying its easy to mistake things with few features.