Costly Ambush

[sburgoon]

Hey everyone,

My name is Sean, and I'm a Technical Artist/Animator who has been working in the games industry for 3 years now. I've always felt like more of a programmer than an artist, so I've been trying to work on my traditional art skills lately. I just finished my first complete composition, and I figured this would be the place to post it. Well, I finished it a few days ago, but I keep wimping out due to the truly intimidating level of talent on these forums, but figured the only way to get better was to just throw stuff out there and find out where I want wrong.

The story behind this (besides starting as a test of a new intuos4) is that a group of goblins was lying in wait in a dark forest, but unfortunately chose the wrong traveler to spring their ambush on. I was going for a darker, disney-ish feel, though steering clear of any explicit violence or gore. Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

-Sean

[Avvatar]

Not bad for a first try, and I like the concept. I think it would be a good idea to practice a bit anatomy first. The knight is looking a little stiff, and I noticed his hand doesn't have any fingers. I would ditch the black outlines on the figures and try to push the shading quite a bit further, especially since they seem to be in a dark forest. You also have the opportunity to create some great lighting scenarios using the beams of light coming through the canopy. Push those beams and maybe throw in some particles and dust.

I would try to sharpen up the background and in general try to stay away from soft brushes unless you really intend to create a focus range. You can also add more variations in color, and don't be afraid to mic things up a bit and do random stuff. I struggle a lot with color too at this point, but I think throwing in some yellows on your plant for example will help.

Good luck and keep at it! I know for myself every single painting I do ends up wayyyyyyy better than the previous, I'm sure the same will happen for you!

[sburgoon]

Thanks for the suggestions and comments I had initially planned on giving some light outlining to the entire background too, but now that you mention it ditching the outlining all together and focusing on just shading to give the form would probably be a better exercise next time. You're right about anatomy too, and hands are definitely my weakest spot (that and feet), which is why I went with the mitten gauntlets. I don't really have any time to do life-drawing (my only real free time is usually between 10pm and 1am on weekdays, and it can be a little hard to find a class at that time) so I've been finding interesting photos of action poses online and working on sketching them. I'll probably open up a sketch-book thread on that forum as well to force myself to keep posting for feedback. Thanks again for posting!

-Sean