Blade Mistress - C&C requested

[N-Mel]

I took this sketch into photoshop to make something more finished...
Here is how I progressed do far. I got a tablet half way through the project.
I think I am at the point now where I need to step away, and get some fresh eyes on it. Any suggestions? Anything working for you that you would like to see pushed? Thanks in advance!

1) Sketch
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y11/N-mel/blademistress_sketch.jpg

2) Color scheme
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y11/N-mel/blademistress0.jpg

3) Background & shading
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y11/N-mel/blademistress1.jpg

4) Atmosphere & details
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y11/N-mel/blademistress2.jpg

5) Close up of step 4
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y11/N-mel/blademistress2_detail.jpg

I can go into details on my process here if that would be helpful...

[madster]

This is coming along really well, I like your color palette, but you have some bad anatomy issues to deal with.
First thing I noticed were her feet. The right one looks REAL wonky, like a cartoon foot. It's too long in the front part, and should bend at the "ball" of the foot, with the toes flat. You also should remove the highlights on the lower right leg. If it is under the upper leg, there should be no highlights like you have them. Also, the crotch is misshapen, as that gap is a little too obvious. :$ The left leg is larger than the right, but the thigh is shorter. This, combined with the cartoon foot on the right with a much longer thigh has her not really well grounded. It's a cross between kind of "hovering" on the floor, or looking pasted on a background.

Next were the arms. Your anatomy is really bad here on the right side, with her hand the size of a canned ham, and the forearm totally out of proportion to the wrist and the rest of her body. The bad foreshortening of the upper arm compounds this, totally throwing off the balance. The left hand is also too large, but the arm proportions are better.

She also looks like the bottom half of her right ear is nonexistant, with the left one proportionately large, shapeless, and too dull in value. Her hair is too chunky and heavy looking to be flying so wildly with no strays or depth, and the way it is flying up both sides of her face with the big swoop before the long chunks fly off to her left looks like she must have some killer hair gel. Hair is like fabric when it moves. That's the look you need to try to convey here.

Your shading along the underside of the top ripple of the cape is very chunky looking. If you're working in Photoshop, try reducing your brush spacing. The "atmosphere" has your light sources all over the place, with poor reflections and refractions. You should back up a step, and clearly define your light sources before adding highlights and refractions. This is noticible from the differing orange highlights on each column (which have NO effect on the figure and her reflective outfit), the weird, fuzzy gray refraction from the floor on her crotch, her lower legs (uneven at that) and lower right arm, which is high in the air, but not the front of her left hand, although there is some refraction on the side of it... There is no clear determination of what the overly-bright light source is that illuminates the top of her cape and her arms so intensely, only lightly shines on her face (with no real shadows to speak of), and yet only shows on the top right side of her hair... :nohope:
Lastly, the handles of her weaponry look extremely fragile and crooked, and the blades look very dull and flat.

It looks like you did not really refine your prliminary sketch before jumping into this project, which could be why you need to give your eyes a rest, because you've been trying to figure out the trouble areas as you went along. The original sketch needed to be cleaned up and better defined before you started coloring. I would suggest you take a bit of time and now create a "details" sketch before you put any more hard work into this. Clearly mark out where your light sources are coming from, and draw some directional lines for yourself. Decide how shiny/reflective her costume, her gloves, and the metal of the blades are going to be, and what surfaces should be bouncing light off of them (I'd get rid of the crotch refractions, or at least tint them to better work with the costume), which of the lights they should have bouncing off of them, and the directions the bounced light will go (draw yourself more arrows). If you are going to keep that intense light source from above, you will need to have that reflecting off of everything at the same angle, hence more need for the arrows. Be sure to mark the orange reflections/refractions as well.

It is obvious that a lot of time and effort went into this, but you didn't have a firm foundation of what you were trying to do, so there are now some big corrections needed, but it's not insurrmountable, just a little time consuming.

Good luck, it will be interesting to see it develop!
~M

[N-Mel]

Thanks Madster for the really great comments. I totally agree that a lot of the problem is in the initial sketch. I did it real fast, and then dove into painting it up before trying to fix any of its many problems. I'll have to learn to not do that. I want to get better habits and painting techniques... :bashful:

[Samuel Gray]

madster if i could give you reps i would, i wanted to say something about this piece but i didnt have the guts.

[madster]

Thanks, guys!
I'm blessed/cursed with a very high visual acuity, so I ofttimes notice colors, shapes and shadings that other people don't necessarily overlook, they just don't see them standing out as much as I do. It's hard to point it out tactfully sometimes, so I'm glad no offense was taken.

Preliminary sketching is always the best start, but you gotta clean it up before painting it, or it loses a lot of its effectiveness. I learned that one the hard way myself, and it still bites me in the butt every time I try to circumvent that step... :dur:

Okay, now I get to be dumb and ask for enlightenment, what are "reps" that you give people? I only know reps=repetitions... :dur: :dur: