Night Hunt - WIP

[Cothull]

I started painting the face, jacket and guns.
While I was painting I came up with a little backstory for my character: The Felisians were a proud and noble race of warriors untill the skyapes came with thier advanced technology and powerfull weapons. The invaders obliterated the Felisian forces but a ferocious undergroud resistance has emerged. Once a culture based or warrior prowess and single combat, the Felisians have been forced to adapt. They now depend on stealth and the element of surprize and they use the powerfull plasma weapons of the invaders against them. There is no honor in shooting your enemy from a distance or attacking when they are unaware, but then again these hairless apes with their orbital weapons and particle rifles do not deserve the honor of a warrior's death and certainly they deserve NO MERCY!

http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman3.jpg

[CGriffin]

Brilliant ponytail! Cat tail? Top knot. Makes me wanna hang a bell from it. To warn birds.

[Cothull]

workin on guns and tightened up the collar and head. I think I might try some alternate collar designs. I should start thinking about a background too, should have done that from the begining but I was itching to jump right into the character. Heres an update:

http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman5.jpg

[DArcy1]

Hi


Your painting skill is obvious (and considerably better than mine!). So my only comment is a bit of a pet peeve I have with all such creatures: where is the brain? What I mean is that most often when people draw animal derived aliens, the skull is that of the earth animal, with no change made to accomadate the larger brain of the intelligent species (consider the difference between human and chimpanzee skulls as an example). I just think it would make a more believable alien to increase the brain:bone ratio.

D'Arcy

[Cothull]

Thanks DArcy1, your right, I think I allowed myself to be overly infuenced by the cover illustration on the Man-Kzin War book I just read :) I should have designed a "feline influenced" alien instead of sticking a panther's head on a humanish body. After I finish this up I will take your advice and do a redesigned version. Thanks for the crit.

[Cothull]

and here is an update. Please crit!
http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman8.jpg

[DArcy1]

Looking better each step :-)

I absolutely love the rendering of that coat - how did you get that texture ??

D'Arcy

[Feyd-Rautha]

It looks really good. Really nicely painted.

My only crit would be that the outlines on the guns give it a kind of cartoony look. Nothing else in the images has outlines, do the guns really need them?

[BlackLight]

First of all let me say that I like the way you've rendered the character himself, particularly the fur and the leather coat.

However I agree with Feyd-Rautha about the gun's black outlines giving them a more cartoony look than the rest of the image. I also think that showing both guns from perfect side views makes them jar. I personally avoid placing anything in my drawings in a perfect side or front on view as it looks 'unnatural'.

[Cothull]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Yes, the guns have been bothering me for a while. thanks for pointing out the problem. I guess I have been staring at it too long. I will work on repainting them, and turn em a little so they are not flat like that. A friend said he looked like a bad ass version of Panthro from The Thundercats (I briefly considered putting the Thundercats emblem on his shoulder :) ).

DArcy1: the texture of the coat is a combination of painting and puting a photograhic texture(of dirt in this case) in overlay mode over selective parts of the coat.

I thought his outfit needed more detail so here is a little different version of the colar and front of coat. Do you like this version better? also I started playing around with these tall rock formations in the background(I guess I am trying to find a subtle way to sugest an alien landscape). Do you think they add anything to the image?

http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman9.jpg

[arpeggioator]

great work here! the coat looks indeed beautiful!
I think you can do the bg more detailed and more realistic. specially the sky.
I want to se some kick ass clouds that show us the time at the day.
maybe you can mix red, orange, blue, pink, or whatever you feel for, into the sky. that will look great i think.

keep going!

[nerdyninja]

I agree about changing the perspective of the guns. I was going to say the same thing about them. Everything else looks great! Love the textures:thumbsup:

[Cothull]

Hi, I finally got time to work on this some more. I took your advice and repainted the guns. Next I will work on the sky. What do ya think so far?



http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman13.jpg

[Cothull]

Worked on the sky some. Crits welcome

http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman14.jpg

[Feyd-Rautha]

Looks great! :thumbsup:

I really like the new sky, and the smoke. Definite improvement.

[arpeggioator]

the sky looks promesing!
personally I would have used more colours on it but this will be a great pic!
the new machineguns are great!

[edit] I did a fast overpaint. Dont know if its okay with you but if its not I will delete it.

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/6651/overpaint6qp.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Kevin-Killjoy]

Hi there Jack -

Nice work, I especially like the quality of the initial sketch, and the night sky. A few comments:

- The perspective of the figure and the background doesn't match. Looking at the alignment of the hips and shoulders, I'd expect the horizon to be level with his teeth.


- lighting/saturation levels are too even across the image. I'd expect the fire to be bright as He** compared to the night sky

-I'd also like to see a stronger silhouette of the foreground character. Tonally he's pretty similar to the background

-Killjoy

[Cothull]

Hey, thanks for the crits!

arpeggioator: the overpaint is cool, I don't mind at all. I like the way you carried the orange lit clouds down to the horizon. It helps silo the figure. I'm not sure if I want it to look like clouds lit by sunset or smoke lit from fire over the horizon or both. I will definitely work on the sky some more.

killjoy: thanks for pointing out the perspective problem. I didnt notice that till I read your post. His forward sholder is lower that the back sholder which implies a higher veiwpoint. My intent was to have a lower veiwpoint to make him look more imposing. I guess thats what I get for adding the bg as an afterthought :) Not sure if I want to raise the horizon or change the alignment of the sholders. What do u think? Also, do you mean I should lower the saturation of the blue in the night sky?

[BlackLight]

The new guns and background look a lot better.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the horizon level. It's obvious from the background that your character is in very hilly terrain and so there's no reason to assume he's standing on the same level as the lowest part of the horizon.

I do think that the silhouetted trees are too sharply defined though. The background should be more blurred that the foreground character to give a sense of depth.

[DArcy1]

I hate perspective rules... I've had the same problem myself. But the perspective is not that far off that it looks bad. In your shoes I'd adjust the rear shoulder slightly down and not worry about it more than that. With the horizon as it stands, it's obviously a fisheye camera sort of effect so you'd expect it to look distorted (btw I love the effect, don't change it).

I like your original "band of smoke" sky effect more than Arpeggiator's overpaint - for me, the focal point of the image is the face. Keeping the smoke just behind his head gives a high value/hue contrast in that area that draws your eye right to it. When the orange extends to the ground the focal point gets unclear.

I do like his "top edge of the clouds" mist effect and his ground fog treatment better though, looks more natural. I'd also blur the details of the moons a bit, make the stars just slightly less prominent.


Definitely want to see this finished!

D.

[Kevin-Killjoy]

The new guns and background look a lot better.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the horizon level. It's obvious from the background that your character is in very hilly terrain and so there's no reason to assume he's standing on the same level as the lowest part of the horizon.

The nature of the horizon is that it remains at a constant level in the scene, no matter what height above/below sea level you may be at. It's theoretically an infinite plane converging at a fixed line. It's not a huge problem, I'm only pointing it our so that we all can be better artists :)

For me it's not the shoulders that are the perspctive give-away, but the elipse of the belt...anyway, maybe don't worry about it with this image, I don't want you to screw your composition up.

arpeggioator's done a nice job of helping to differentiate the foreground and background, by using the clouds to help define the silhouette of the tiger warrior. Maybe even boost the saturation on the clouds?

[Cothull]

Here is my latest set of tweeks. Thanks for all the great feedback and crits. You guys and gals have helped me push this image up a notch!

http://www.peculiarpixel.com/exps/catman15.jpg

[Feyd-Rautha]

This is looking great Cothull! :thumbsup: Very cool image.

I have just one comment. The thin streaky clouds behind the smoke don't look quite right. They could possibly be more streaky and random. I'm not great at painting clouds myself, they're tough to get right, so I can't tell you exactly what to do with them. One thing that I've found can work is using a small brush set to smudge to drag little wispy bits out of the clouds, and generally smudge them around a bit.

edit: if someone knows of a better way to paint clouds I'm all ears :)

[Defcombeta]

very nice , i love the set up and the style, the coluds need a bit more rendering but its looks solid, the main characters reminds me of the wing commander games from the mid 90s, great stuff.

j mac

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