is it a monster.....???

[scottleroc]

Hhere is another piece that could probably do with sme more love.

I know what your thinking, 'where are his eyes...' its quite common for me to leave the eyes till the very last minute. Why?. Because I want to get the emmotion into the face before adding the eyes. Once I have the emmotion right on the face I put the eyes in :D so it doesn't distract me while I am painting. Sounds weird I know but people read a face based on the eyes.

Anyway here is this ugly fella. What are your thoughts :D

[stoph]

it really is quite nice, yet the harsh dark outline only lends itself to flattening the image. might be an idea to paint in a bg, even an ambiguous one, so that it isnt flattened out so dramatically. i think your inward values are also to blame for this impression. dont be afraid to use your darker values, they help confuse the eye and make an object appear 3D as opposed to the 2D it really is. establish a light source, then go for your life! :}

[dogfood]

While you have some sweet textures going, the highlights are so plentiful as to flatten the image. Like he was a billiard ball, choose one spot to lay in the strongest highlight. Then put in a few secondary highlights on areas that should be facing the light, as well. Next, put in some tertiary ones that represent wrinkles or folds that are catching the light. Make sure each set is weaker than the set before and then stop putting in highlights.

Try to choose a light source that doesn't co-exist with the viewer's eye; that also flattens an image (like snap shots).

[scottleroc]

your both right. This piece needs to be made more 3d. Thats the problem with my work I guess it is because I am a texture artist and this piece was done to help me sculpt up a z-brush model.

Godamn you guys are good, glad I found this place. I will put it together as soon as I have finished my 'slugapillar' piece.

Keep those suggestions coming in, they are very helpful indeed :D

[carakhan]

I knew you had to be a texture artist, because this looks exactly like a texture for a model. It does look very flat, maybe you should try to stay away from complete black for the shading as well, and the texture on top of the head is really flattening him out.I think it's because the shading is almost gradient-like, I don't get a roundness there.

That's all I have for now, hope it helps.

[scottleroc]

LMAO I hope being a texture/ 3d artist isn't a bad thing ThinMint :D

[carakhan]

No not at all. I'm going to school for computer animation myself, so I'm just used to looking at stuff like this. I just didn't think that's what you were going for, so I wanted to point it out.

[scottleroc]

right time to move on with this piece

I am laying in a atmos and establishing a relationship between the character and his environment.

The concept is a nightwatchman/ troll thing :D

anyway I hope you enjoy the progress o this guy and help out like you did with slugapillar (and the hunter). enjoy :D

[scottleroc]

update: still setting up the environment and getting the moonlight right but you can see where it is going.

Right beer and girlfriend time or I will be a single man and I dont want that.

[scottleroc]

Hey guys just a quick question.

How come no one has really done a crit on this piece? I thought it was going in the right direction but no response makes me wonder.

[carakhan]

Sorry I've been gone a few days.

I love the new color. The cool colors work much better than the first one, gives that nighttime feel.
You're suffering from the "too-much-blend-tool" on the background again. You need a middle ground element so that your monster guy doesn't look pasted on to a blurry background. Putting a hill, some rocks, or something in the middleground will help with the depth as well, since I'm not really feeling it. I almost want the monster himself to be the middleground, perhaps on a path on a closer mountain. I don't know what he's looking at, and it's a little confusing that you've got these people in the background and yet he's unphased. There's no emotion, I can't tell what the character is thinking and feeling. Now that you've started to make it into a real piece instead of just a profile, you've got to include the story more.

I'm kind of rambling. Take what you will of it, hope it helps.

Oh, ps. Don't get discouraged if you aren't getting the hits and crits that you want. A lot of people lurk here, so they don't do a lot of responding. I'm actually one of those people most of the time. Don't think that just because people aren't commenting that it's not going in the right direction. I find that the pieces that are middle of the road, like aren't amazing and aren't really bad, don't get as many hits and crits. Keep doing what you're doing, don't assume that it sucks, cause it doesn't, ok?

Bye!

[Chender]

From the first pic I thought it was some sort of floating head (like something from Doom), but I like the way you've grounded it with a body.

I actually liked the previous background a little better. The entire image just seemed more saturated and thick. It was darker and fell back easily to the eye, leaving the monsters head as the clear focal point. There's a bit more of a fight for attention now. Also since it's lighter, the lack of detail is more obvious. Not that the whole background needs detailing, but at least the closer areas so there isn't such a huge jump from the monster to the background.

The impressions the last two variations give are interesting. With the greener one it gives off the idea that the monster is some sort of mutant in a poisonous world. Now it seems more like there are more of these kinds of creatures and he is simply an individual of this alien culture.

I too, am curious as to what he'll be looking at.

[d00dle]

Back to school, I guess, not many people show up here this week. When I first saw this head, I thought it was a 3d head monster. Very nice texture.

[gorillagrin]

I hope you don't mind, I did a small paintover to accentuate what dogfood was talking about above.

By picking a highlight area (where your light source is most directly hitting the form) and letting the light fall off from that area you can keep the viewer's eye more focused and prevent them from looking all over the canvas at too many highlights. I also added some darker areas to the closer side of the cliff structure to (hopefully) create a better sense of depth.

Anyway it's coming along well and each step has been an improvement on the last. Keep them coming! :)

[Justin.]

Not a huge fan of the profile view, it makes the pic a bit boring, but aside from that I love it, the color and all, and the BG. I'd just maybe add some light texturing to the cliffs and trees, and maybe define the clouds better?

[dogfood]

Thanks, Gorilla; that's very nicely done.

I'm not excited about the composition. You have the cliff echoing the contours of the face, which seperates the picture unnaturally and creates a hot zone in between the two main shapes.

[Archangelbebe]

I liked the darker picture better.. though it may've not been the effect you wanted. It seemed he was really in the night.. in some place where the moon light doesn't look like it does in the real world. It added some dark mysteriousness to him. I really like him, though. He looks like an old worn guard.. reminds me of a nice old man. ( not sure if that means any thing good to you because he's a monster.. but he looks like a nice old man with great knowledge or something, hehe)

[scottleroc]

gorillagrin Thank you for spending the time doing what I usually do at the end of a piece, apply final highs. I have to say this piece is in progress. The composition isn't even close to being nailed. I was posting the progress at each step for you guys to see that's all.

I have to thank Archangelbebe, big gold star. You made me so hapy because you practically worked out everything about my piece before it is even have finished :O

Yes he is a worn out guard. He is on Nightwatch (the title of the piece) and consumed by thoughts of past campaigns. He watches over the younger people of the village and morns his youth. Sorry if that sounds deep but there you go.

Finally, the paintover, I get the highlights but what you have done to the clouds is not really what I was after. I know why you have done it but your missing the point. The moon is lighting the edges of the clouds hotspot or no hotspot that's reality. I will have to consider another approch to the clouds.

[gorillagrin]

Hi Scott, I hope you didn't think I was trying to finish off the piece for you as I certainly didn't mean it that way. That main thing I was trying to get across wasn't applying the final highlights as you mentioned but rather reducing them where they felt scattered and distracting. I realize that this is still very much a work in progress and only meant the paintover to be a suggestion of a few small changes that could help bring more focus to your character. If you'd rather I took down the paintover just left me know.

[Heat]

dont cheat, give us a perspective shot

see gorilliagrin's avatar

[Silvertone]

I agree with dogfood about the composition. The creatures head and the cliff are too similar in shape and size. The viewers eye doesn't really have a path to follow. The fire in the background seems dominant since it's so bright, and the face seems dominant because, well, it's a face that's well rendered and people tend to immediately look at faces/eyes.

Maybe if the fire in the background wasn't so intense and you changed the shape and size of the cliff. Also have some of the rock shapes towards the bottom extending out more so they would overlap, (actually I guess it'd be underlap?) the foreground guy. This might help lead the viewers eye back up into the foreground face. Hopefully that makes sense!

[scottleroc]

Heat, why am I cheating???? :D