Debute post

[RATBAT]

well, im a nooB, ive known this place has exsisted for a long time. and im envious of all the artists here. i give mad props to all of you out there who weild the colors with prescision. i also held off posting here because i didnt really think anything i had was well-concepted. but a guy named Stan told me to post this here. so here it is:
http://side7.gundam.com/ratbat/pictures/edentree1.jpg

I decided id like to have a D&D style picture of an old gigant tree forest. the origional focus was meant to be a tree-house, but i ended up favoring the water hole instead.

do you think this is a good pic?

[Orban]

Uhmm, the drawing seem to be really cool but(yeah, there's a but) :

it lack of contrast. Everything seem to on the same plane :s Try to have darker thing in front, they will pop out of your drawing. A friend of mine help me for this kind of thing by saying to me to use different pencil : 1 hb for the esquisse, 1b for more or less most of the drawing, and made thing pop out with the use of a 2b(or 4b... depend of how many level of shade I try to achieve). I use that for my drawing from life(hb + 2b + tiny eraser), work pretty fine.

[Crunch]

nice perspective but you need contrast. and detail some parts that are real important to notice.

[Aphro]

I think it looks great. but the problem you got is that you can't tell where your horizon line is, cuz you got a birds eye view of the tree house which makes it look a bit off. and for the objects that are closer to you just make a thiker outline, that'll make it pop right out.

can't wait to see more posts dude, keep up the good work.:beer:

[redehlert]

Hey there, RATBAT.

First of all...glad you posted! Your work is really going in the right direction!

I agree with the others about the contrast, but there's also the focus on texture for images up close and lack thereof for those in the distance.
I took a really quick stab at conveying this with your file....hope you don't mind.
I softened the tones you created to give a sense of water and popped in some stones beneath the surface. Added a bit of texture to the planks of the walkway and tried to give a lot more tonal variation in the foreground material and convey a ethereal background for the trees and shapes in the distance.
Understanding where your lightsource is coming from is very helpful. It appears that the light is spilling from the horizone line in the distance with an ambient foreground light, so I worked with it quickly to get the point across. If it were night time, I'd play with the light differently...and I think it would be slick as all get out as a night piece!
I'm definitely not the pro at environmental work and this is the first time I've ever worked on someone's illustration, so don't shoot me, mmkay? Spent 20 minutes on this in Photoshop 7 (didn't work on everything in your piece) working with adjustment layer - LEVEL, the blur tool for the water and trees in the background, the dodge and burn tool to pull and push values and the paintbrush tool to drop in tone with the tool set to multiply.
If you want the actual PSD file, let me know...I'll send it to you directly.

Hope this helps!

http://redehlert.com/conceptart/edentree1_rvsn.jpg

Cheers!
Dave