Flower Girl

[mirapakai]

nice one ... i love the way you rendered the foliage. can you please elobarate on it?(may be brushes and the settings for such realistic and natural flow). and the wrinkles of the hair are also gr8 ; one little thing i noticed is the blurry air brush kind of highlights on hair , did you use burn/dodge tool or a large airbrush in the last stages of the finishing??? it reduced the handpainted strokes. nice detail in face .... only thing i notice there is slight misalignment between the eyes. may be i was being picky... anyway it is a nice render...

[RicoD]

*agrees* Those are some gnarly bushes man ! (Betcha haven't heard that expression since I don't know ... the 1980's ?)

The flower's nice too and I'm totally digging her freckles. Didn't know South-American people had freckles though. I'll check my brother next time I see him (he's from Equador). ;) If she is supposed to be Mayan or Incan, they have darker and redder skin (and in general sharper corners, but that differs per person of course)

The main distraction point would be her hair though. The strokes of hair are too uniform and have some unnatural highlights / shadows. The far side (behind her face) looks better, with the blending and all that, but the right side looks unnatural with heavy and iron curled curling not present at the left side.

[Griswald]

yeah, the hair was the trickiest part for me. I did use a soft brush over the hair near the end for colour variation, I didn't notice that it affected the hair badly in anyway. Not sure if I'll bother to fix it, because I need to start working on new things. I guess it all comes down to using good reference, and the hair was the only thing I didn't use reference for in the early stages. For some stupid reason.

The foliage was done with a couple of custom brushes, shaped like leaves. I set them to scattering, increased the amount, and turned on colour dynamics and opacity. Layers were set to bevel / emboss and drop shadow. I used many, many layers. Lastly I painted colour variations and increased contrast over the top, and some atmospherics.

She's not really supposed to be Mayan or anything, it's more of an imaginary culture that was based on a bit of Mayan and Cambodian. The girl's face was based on a photo of a japanese girl. She kinda looks a bit Hawaiian to me. I guess I was mainly inspired by the game Shadow of the Collosus, and Hoang Nguyen's portrait tutorial in ImagineFX, although I didn't actually follow it.

[Griswald]

I decided to see if I could fix up the hair a little, doesn't quite fix the problem, but the shapes are a little less uniform now.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k293/Chimbuku/girl_Final2.jpg

[nblarson]

Awesome background, I agree that the foliage looks great.

I'm having a bit of a problem with the position of her head, it almost looks like it's over-rotated. You'll notice that when you turn your head, it's starts to feel uncomfortable about 70-75 degrees from center, and it's almost impossible to break 90 degrees without really straining yourself, and it looks like her face is breaking the plane of her body by a few degrees. I'm not an anatomy expert by any means, but it just sticks out to me.

[RicoD]

No, you're quite correct. The face and neck are seen from the front and the back and arm are seen from .. well, the back.

[Ney]

I really like this picture, I can't beleive it was rejected!
it's funny, I actually thought of the imaginefx cover as soon as I saw it, I can definately see the inspiration.

[Griswald]

yeah, someone else pointed out that about her neck. Do you reckon it would be possible to fix it by shifting the shoulder and back a bit, or is it one of those "Redo" type of things?

And Ney, I think it was rejected because of the fact that I have 10 images in my CGportfolio, you're only supposed to have 5, right? I thought they changed it, but I dunno.

[RicoD]

I didn't even notice until nblarson mentioned it, except that there were some weird things going on. I hope you don't mind, but I made 2 quick suggestions. Both require quite a bit of repainting though.

With the first you keep the face and change the body, with the second you keep the body, but have to repaint the face and neck.

Suggestion 1 :
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s4/RicoD_PB/girl_Final2_suggestion1.jpg

Suggestion 2:
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s4/RicoD_PB/girl_Final2_suggestion2.jpg
(http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s4/RicoD_PB/girl_Final2_suggestion2.jpg)

[nblarson]

Those are basically the same suggestions I would have given, RicoD. While the first one has the interest of saving a large portion of the work...I would personally pick the second one (the pose is more dynamic and interesting). Of course this means repainting the whole face, but I think it would be for the best.

Also, the direction of her gaze is kind of distracting (it makes me wander off the piece). A look directly out towards the viewer might be more captivating.

[RicoD]

I agree again. :) But that's really not up to any of us. Griswald's flower girl isn't looking at the 'spectator' and has this 'oh, golly' thing going on. A girl looking over her shoulder makes it immediately sexy, but yes, it would be more interesting than the look I put on her.

[Griswald]

hmmm... good suggestions but I'm not sure I have the patience to completely repaint the face.... What if I repaint the body so its more side on? Would probably be more interesting than front on, and would probably require less repainting. The original idea was that her shoulder was to be pulled forward a bit, kinda like she's slightly hunched over on that side. I guess a bit like the cover of Issue 10 of ImagineFX, but from a different angle.

[RicoD]

Sure, that could work. You could cut out her face and draw different sketches under or over them to see what would work for you.

[Griswald]

I've made an attempt to rotate the body a little bit. It's a bit cheap and lazy though, all I did was move bits around and then repaint over the top. I'm not sure if I've rotated it far enough either, but I think the pose is a bit better.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k293/Chimbuku/Flower_girl_ReJig-1.jpg

[nblarson]

Ok, so I took a look at the cover you were referring to, and decided to just put up a very quick sketch of what I think the position should be (with keeping the face intact in mind) along with painting bodily axes to help you show how the planes are crossing as of now. I also think this gives a bit more of the hunched look you were wanting as well.

http://a603.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/8/l_a1392c0b7abeed3d67b0634b3eb85d92.jpg

If you look back at the cover, you will notice that her body and her face point in the same direction, and their central axes are only separated by maybe 30-40 degrees max. This quick sketchover is closer to a 10-20 degree differential, but I hope it helps you see what I'm talking about. If you wanted you could move the left shoulder further to the left to give it a more "over the shoulder" feel, but I wouldn't push it much further than inline with her ear.

[Griswald]

*Groan* I was hoping I wouldn't have to repaint the whole body, but it looks like I'll have to... I'll see what I can do, but considering how long it took to get it to this level, it may take a while.

Heh, I really should learn to post earlier versions of works so I don't end up having to do complete overhauls

[nblarson]

Sorry :(

It's honestly not that bad right now, and many people probably won't catch it without looking for it, I'm just being picky now that it's been brought up.

[Griswald]

no worries, I posted it here for critiques anyway, and now that I see it, I can't help hearing *Crack* "Ow, my neck!" in my head. Good practice anyway, I've made a start at the new body.

[Griswald]

Didn't take me as long for me to get it to a decent level as I thought, here's what I've done with the body so far.

http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k293/Chimbuku/girl_new.jpg

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