need critique

[toddNS]

it came out a little blurry on this computer.
done in painter

(ignore those mountains at the far left. forgot to fix that)

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2249/78728366ok9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
the best reference i could find were from goggle and all they had where a bunch of mediocre paintings. anyone know of somegood dinosaur sites?

[Maestro Andres]

Hmm, before giving a critique, can you post a bigger size of the picture so that more details can be seen for proper critique, well that if the image is bigger.

[Haven15]

i think having the sky so light really takes away from the mood. it just seems too happy. i dont know about you but when i think about that meteor hitting into the earth and killing all those creatures, i think it would be somewhat more grim than that.

i think you should darken that sky up and make the meteor glow a little more.

[vallan1]

yeah i agree with haven, darken the scene, and if you darken the sky, make sure you add more dark behind the dinosaurs backs to add to the mood

[toddNS]

ahhh! i was hoping that i wouldent get a bunch of comments about the color. this was a reworking of a piece i finished about a year ago and i just love those colors. i dont know, to me that is the mood... fantasy like. :[

your right thou. so i played around with it in photoshop but i dont really know alot about color corection in ps and im not shure i like what i got a hole lot better. does anyone have any suggestions or better yet, can you just tell me how to make it look cooler?

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/2418/52vt3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3259/53wf5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Haven15]

i think you should go EVEN darker. don't be afraid to really darken it up. it's looking better though. i think it looks better without the blue tint.

[BLADES]

I think maybe you should lower the horizon line a bit. I want to feel right up there with them :P

[toddNS]

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/656/54of5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

all right thats the one im using unless someone can show me something better

[druvid]

This is my favorite version so far - by simply adjusting your colors you've given it the perception of being far more detailed than the first image you chose. I really like the dino on the far right. I would also still experiment with a darker image, just to see what effect it might had, and I agree with vallan that adding more dark behind the dinosaurs' backs (facing us) would make this even MORE dramatic.

Nice work, hope to see more. :)

[DieOmaBrennt]

Darken the sky and get rid of the details on the mountains.
They have a similair structure like the dinosaur skin, this is confusing.
Remember that objects that are far away loose details, contrast and saturation (this is for the mountains and the birds on the right)


The birds are also a problem:

-The left archeopteryx flattens the tail of the left brachiosaur because it looks like it´s running over the sand. Get rid of the feet, every flying animal puts the feet near the body when it´s flying.

-The left and the middle birds make the dinosaurs around them look too tiny, an archeopteryx had the size of a duck and a sauropod the size of a whale. The viewer could get confused about the sizes because it´s not clear how far the dinosaurs are away from the birds.
Look how some other illustrator has used the size of two different dinosaurs to make them look huge and tiny:
http://www.raul-martin.net/supersaurus_ini.jpg

-There´s also an issue with the position of the birds, I can imagine that they are flying from left to right in a curve and dissappear behind the mountains. You need more smaller birds to make this movement clear, otherwise these are just a bunch of random birds.
I have left them out in the paint over because I wasn´t able to fix them.


The right dinosaur.. put the head higher, then the horizon makes sense.

The left dinosuar has some bumps in his spine, try to make it more flowing. The position of it doesn´t make much sense and doesn´t look good, maybe you could make the body look more towards the rest of the dinosaurs?
You could also play around with the dinosaur in the middle, huge animals look always good if you put some perspective in the figure.. like here
http://www.texaspolicecentral.com/Dino.jpg

Play around with your composition.. the left brachiosaur, the archeopteryx and the explosion look like they are squashed in one corner of the pic. The action is on the left but we don´t get enough to see.



Dinosaur sites.. hmm.. there are a bunch of artists who have made very good illustrations. Charles Knight is something like Frank Frazetta of dinosaurs..
but here´s also a nice bunch of other illustrators who dealt with sauropods.
http://www.search4dinosaurs.com/a2d.htm
The first part of "In a land before time" also had some useful pics of huge dinosaurs at the beginning.

[vallan1]

the image that dieoma did is much more ideal for this type of picture, go with what he overpainted, keep going with it.

[OpenJawProd]

Looks very good. Nice work

[rauschelbach]

I was also going to mention the mountains, they need to fade off and lose detail. And maybe if the horizon line curved down toward each side of the page, instead of curving slightly up, it might look better. Just a suggestion, it might give it the slight look of the curvature of the earth.

I was working on a dinosaur (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=91350) illustration myself actally, so it was cool to see yours too. Good luck!

[deomonte21]

Here is a 20 minute or so rework. I created a selection of the sky whick probally took the most time ...Under Image>adjustments>hue/saturation I adjusted the color of the sky. Than used the color to clear gradient tool to add some additional color on the horizon and made the top coner a bit darker. Put shadow on the viewers side of the mountain to make comet look farther away. Added a more contrast to the back of the dinosaurs. Hopefully this will maybe respark the creativce juices and take this in a direction that you are happy with. Nice piece though. I like it.

[toddNS]

..... :painting:

[toddNS]

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/9526/5acopyux6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/751/7copyto8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

made their backs darker, fixed the mountains a little and started working on that other composition.

i think im pretty much done with the first one. the second one im going to add spikes on the sauropods backs like in the picture from that link dieoma posted. im also thinking about adding one or two more dinos with one of them in a position that adds more movement to the other side of the picture. and maybe a baby or two..?? and im still looking for a place to put some birds even if they are far away.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/457/7copyaba5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
let me know what ya think.

thanks alot for all the help