A Dragon...who loves to read

[JeffZNY]

Hey all, I'm enjoying these forums so far...they're a lot of fun, and I've see some absoultely amazing art on here. Very inspiring. Anyway, this is a character design I did for a dragon that loves to read and sneaks into the library each night to do so. It's for a children's book that a client is trying to get published (I'm doing the illustrations mostly as a favor...I'm still very much unemployed!). I got lazy with the shadow on the floor, and even worse, I acknowledge this problem and am still too lazy to fix it! I was mostly concerned with the character design though, sooooo let me know what you think! C&C welcome!
http://members.aol.com/jeffzny/arigato.jpg

[pages pastime prints]

I love your dragon, I'm still trying after years to get my stuff going and am looking for work too...if you have any tips you can share or want to see my art I'm at pagespastimeprints@webspawner.com,the input is good for me and I like your style.

[Elwell]

The character design itself is very nice. I'd suggest having him actually sitting on his haunches instead of squatting; there's too much tension in the rear half of his body and it takes away from the feeling that he's really absorbed in the book.

The painting on the dragon itself is OK but you need to understand your light sources better, and the handling of the bookshelves is just awful (sorry :o).

Finally, you should know that doing this as a favor and for practice/experience is fine, but children's book publishers are much more likely to accept an unillustrated manuscript from an author.

[JeffZNY]

Yeah, I know it. And as you pointed out, much of the picture is half-assed with the most attention paid to the character design. In truth, I kind of got painted into a corner concerning my obligation to illustrate this book. The author already had the manuscript rejected, but was told they'd like to see it illustrated. I had never heard of a publisher taking that approach, so I'm assuming they are just messing with her. Regardless, I'm trying to find a delicate way to appease the author, and politely wash my hands of the project. If nothing else though, I've got an interesting looking dragon;)

[davi]

Try painting in pure greyscale for awhile and stressing values and form.

a picture with photo manip isn't very easy to critique

[Jason Manley]

there is something nice about the dragons head. as far as the body parts, I would draw some more animals from life...or find pictures of lions and lizards and dinosaur art or anything which you can look at to see how marks can suggest what is under the muscles ..to see where and why muscles are there. basically...learn your animal anatomy. it will show up in this kind of stuff if you do. draw LOTS of animals. LOTS.


J

[bhuddistmonk]

hey, i would suggest that you look at some of Frank Hoffman's work.

[dCepT]

I have to agree with elwell, concerning his hind section.
also, I'd loose the photo-manipulated background.
I think the atmosphere could do with a little change as well. IMO it would be a more cozy image if the lighting was a bit darker around the library. So you would get that reading light feeling.

I like the design of your dragon, though! I would very much like to see an update.

d-C

[Velo]

Lots of critique about the dragon here, so I have some suggestions for how you could make the whole piece more successful without too much additional work. Does it have to be this size and shape? I think you could improve the feel alot by loosing most of the books, since they are messy and a completely different style from the dragon. What about vignetting him in a circle or oval? You could use some graphic design to still incorporate the shape successfully into the framing, if it's a requirement. Also, I would darken the background (those photoshop lights especially the one behind his tail!) and get rid of the books in the foreground. They don't make sense perspective-wise and with the smaller framing shouldn't be necessary to place him in the environment.

[Red_Rook]

Apart from what was mentioned by all of the above. The ifrst thing that really stood out to me is the blurry books, at first i thought the image hadnt finished loading or somthin. It incredibly distracting, trytaking out the books completely. Because curently everything loooks really flat, it looks kinda like a really badly done set design for a stage were everything is cut out of cardboard and placed at diffrent distacnes. The blur is really distractingi sugest either completely ditching the books or drawing them out from hand like you would the dragon. Instead of loosing focus you can easily show depth with colour and value variation along with lineweight changes.