a Second try

[blackWolf]

Hey everyone,

Posted this once before with url, but wasn't getting much response, so hopefully with the pic in the thread you guys'll take more interest:)

and still -- the feet are coming!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/tully/Maeda3copy2.jpg

[MoP]

Well, this is turning out pretty nicely.
I wonder, are you working on this with pure white as a background colour, or do you have some different background that you're not showing for this? I usually find that working against a black or white background can lead to difficulty in choices of contrast and colour, since you have no overall tone to judge against.
If you do have a background you're just deciding not to show at the moment though, that's entirely your choice :)

Things I love about this:
Pretty much everything below the waist - the shading on the legs is superb, as is the pose, and the cloth works well with these too. The arm is in a good pose too, but is lacking the contrast in tone that the legs have.

Things I don't like:
- The angle of the neck, shoulders and face is very unnatural. It looks really forced and odd. Her head seems to be too far to the left of the image, it looks like her neck's gonna be broken or something. Her shoulder seems dislocated, for the angle you have the collarbone and neck, it seems the shoulder connection would be higher and closer to the neck. Also, with this perspective I'd expect to be able to see her right shoulder, given the angle of her upper chest and collarbones.
I tried just moving her head to the right a little in Photoshop, and it really improves her balance - also rotating and skewing the head up a little fixes a lot of issues there, I reckon.
The fact I can't see her right arm at all (either shoulder or hand) is pretty weird too. Are you still working on that area? Is she gonna be holding something? It will look pretty boring if there's just her left arm hanging by her side, and no sign of a right arm at all.
- The cloth is shaded almost to black. I don't like this at all, IMHO it would look a lot better if you used a dark, fairly desaturated blue-green colour for the darkest of the cloth folds... black just looks wrong and unnatural. Have a look at some photos of green cloth, I reckon the only kind of cloth that would shade almost to black would be some kind of shiny silk, and then it would deserve more highlights to make that clear. This dull sort of fabric would definitely have a lighter shadow colour.

Something I also notice is that the leg shading looks nice because you're adding saturation to the flesh near the shadow terminator (where the midtone fades to shadow), which implies sub-surface scattering of light, which is a natural property of human flesh and skin. You're not getting this same effect on the torso or arm, or indeed the face, where the midtone/shadow terminator is fairly desaturated... make it more orange/red like on the leg and it will give the whole piece a more consistent and "alive" look, I think.

The overall flesh hue is maybe slightly too yellow at the moment, shifting it towards the red/pink range might look better IMHO.

The shading on the area between the bridge of the nose and cheek is a little off at the moment, it's making her nose look really wide, and I don't think that's your intention (or shouldn't be, she looks like the sort of character who has a narrow, fine-boned nose). Just add a little more shadow there.

So yeah, in brief, the major points:
- Angle of head/neck/shoulders against each other seems wrong.
- Shadows of cloth are too black - cloth in general should have more colour and hue to imply bounced light and such.
- Flesh hue too yellow, needs more saturation near the midtone/shadow borders.
- Give it a background to get a better feel for where light should be coming from, bouncing off and reflecting. A character against a white background is much harder to judge than one against even a flat midtone...

Good luck finishing this off, I have high hopes for it!

MoP

[blackWolf]

Thanks so much for the insight, MoP, I really appreciate it

Here's an update...

Again...-feet need a little work
-adjusted some of the colours on skin and fabric
-adjusted head position
-*she is supposed to be that freaky yellow colour*
-some thoughts on some texture for red bit

(they're supposed to end up as scales)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v631/Scorpiofyre/Naalicopy.jpg

[Chuck Wadey]

Adding that little bit of her distant arm helped a lot. I still want to see just a sliver of that shoulder too.

Lookin' good.

[MoP]

Ahh, yeah, that arm in the background really helps sell the pose now.
The head move is a big improvement too.
I think the heel of her right foot should be a little more prominent, the whole foot looks very flat at the moment.
The shading on her left foot seems a little odd, I don't think it's showing the proper form and mass of the foot properly yet.
Still, it's looking good.
Can't wait to see what you do with the scales, sounds like a cool idea!

I still think the shadows in the cloth folds are too dark ;)
^ Edit, actually now I look at it again, that's not actually true, the darkness of the folds is fine, but the problem is the areas of shadow are too large - I think maybe the midtone should be more evident all over the cloth, with thinner areas of shadow for the deepest folds.

MoP