A 2D work - Requesting Critique

[UmmTheHobo]

I am not an experienced of an artist but here are my 2 cents!

The thing that turns me off about this picture is the inconsistency. The clothes on one character is nicely detailed, but the face looks extremely 2d. The most extreme case is the really white dude with white hair. His clothes are detailed then you get to the ear and it is just blue lines.

The best way to practice lighting is just to go outside and look at things. Why does this rock have a shadow right here? If the sun was at a different angle how would it change? Really simple stuff that you can learn a lot from.

[Helenlyn]

Well, it takes guts to put your work under scrutiny, especially online.
It takes even more guts to ask such questions knowing that you might get answers you won't like.

I have some questions for you:
Do you have a tablet?
How long have you been drawing using traditional media? (pencils, charcoal, paints, etc.)
How long have you been drawing using digital media?


I love the gimp - I've used photoshop, opencanvas, and the gimp - and right now my software of choice is the gimp.
Digital art takes practice no matter what the software is, no matter how much talent a person has. If Vermeer were brought back to life today and given Photoshop and ZBrush and told to make a masterpiece, he'd have to practice nonstop for weeks before... well, you get the idea.
I'm personally too young and inexperienced to answer some of your questions... I'm not usually taken seriously in most things, so... I draw for my own benefit/boredom.

Now for your questions...

1. I honestly believe (now people will disagree with me) that every human being has the ability to create (see my signature). I think creativity is part of our soul, our innate ability, if you will. Artists are the people who can tap into their creativity/soul and channel it (express it) through visual media, creating... art!
Whether or not you have something is not the question... (I firmly believe you have a soul!) whether or not you'll be able to tap into it and express yourself in your art is the greater question.
You need to practice a lot before it becomes clear whether you are one of these people or not.

Even if you decide you aren't, I think you should still draw. Drawing makes me happy, and even if I had no talent at it whatsoever, I'd still draw!

2. It seems to me the white beastie is mesmerized by the light, the blonde elfin lass seems to want the light put away, perhaps because it's an elfin artifact and not to be touched by the dark-haired human lad. The white-haired human seems a bit peeved as well. No idea what the triton-weilding midget and the sword-bearing giant are up to.

3. Well I don't know... I'm no professional, have never met one personally, and it really isn't fair to ask that question about an image that isn't at a professional level. It also varies on the individual and their line of work; manga artists, for example, must work quickly, while illustrators put many hours into everything.

If you're having trouble with speed, gestures help... they helped me enormously. If you can't have a model change pose every five minutes, grab a fashion magazine or magazine with lots of adverts that feature people. (magazines directed at teen girls work nicely... lots of unique poses, eccentric clothing, lots of bright distracting colors that will teach you to see what you need to see when drawing, etc.) Flip through the magazine and start sketching - don't let yourself sketch for more than 10 minutes. Once you're done with the sketch rip out the page and staple/tape it to your drawing. Date the drawing and write down how long it took you.
And ofc there are daily speedpaints on this website.

4. No clue... I've spent a whopping one hour using macromedia flash... I made a nice flashy gif avatar for my deviantart... half of everything in that animation was an accident... and I'd hardly even call it an animation!

5. Well, very few people even take my work seriously, so I don't know how much help I can be.
There are some very nice things in this picture... the light the human lad is holding is great and so is his armor. Also the foreshortening is very impressive.

Things I'd do (Steering you towards a more realistic style... it's a long road):

Ahem... I think you should make the picture go down to their feet. There are pros and cons to this... if there is a lot going on down there people will look down and their eyes will be swept off the page. (this can be avoided by putting enough ground at the bottom of the picture.) As it is, the swords and the blonde elf's legs lead the viewer's eyes off the picture.

a. background... there's a lovely tutorial right here (http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/starfield-tutorial.html) for the gimp on making starfields. (I'd only go to step six in this tutorial for this picture) I'd get rid of the tall trees and whatnot and put low-lying bushes with the light reflecting off a few leaves.

b. Lighting... Is there an unseen lightsource behind the
white-haired man? If there is, why aren't they gathered around that? What is that lightsource? A fire? The moon?
If it's the moon it should be much more silver-y and subtle. The brightest light, in the composition of this piece, should be the golden-white object.
Thus there will be MANY more shadows, and the light reflected on the peoples' and animal's faces will be a golden color and it will also reflect golden on their clothing, though to a lesser degree.
Lighting in this picture would be hard no matter what, since this is a night scene and the major source of light is the center piece.
(leave moonlight till the end, then maybe putt a bit of a sheen here and there.)

c1. Get rid of the lines. You need to use ONE style consistently. Either have nice clean lines or have no lines at all. Since you don't have any lines on the clothes, get rid of all the other lines on their skin. (The dark-haired girl's hand is what we're going for, although the skin tone is somewhat lacking)

c2. Work on the skin tones. Furiae (http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=gallery) has a good tutorial. When I started I used this (http://ramy.deviantart.com/art/Digital-Painting-Tutorial-D-21024511) tutorial on Deviantart. It's very popular and echos some of the points Furiae makes on skin tones. It's intended for Photoshop, but many things in photoshop transfer to the gimp.

c3. Make the hair believeable. This is something I'm constantly working on myself. There are TONS of hair tutorials out there. I saw a very good one posted on this site earlier... but I didn't bookmark it. :( Try this (http://dianae.deviantart.com/art/Hair-painting-tutorial-48064074) one. And look for others. Try each one of them. Decide which one gives you the best results and perfect it. Then take it to this picture.

Also the fur... find fur tutorials and whatnot. make the beastie's fur believeable. Or wait... is it a dragon?

c4. Eyes... eyes... there's a tutorial on furiae, linked above in the skintones.

d. Improve the characters. The blonde elf - is she supposed to be attractive? Right now she looks a little pudgy and her nose is a little funny. Why is she wearing a skin-tight outfit when she's pudgy? And why is she pudgy when she's an elf? Look at girl's fashion magazines. If this elf is supposed to have HIPS, look at Maria Sharapova (http://www.wonderday.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/maria-sharapova-celebrating.jpg), for she has HIPS. She also has a very strong and athletic body, and is attractive.
Sorry, but unless someone's skills are extremely great, nobody's going to pay attention to it without aesthetic beauty. Also known as, attractiveness.
Do the same for all the other characters, unless they aren't supposed to be attractive.

e. Depth. I'll be honest... the little guy does not help at all. His proportions are that of a normal sized human, but he's so small! Um... I'd probably cut him out of the picture at all, since he isn't contributing much and what I'm about to suggest for you to do isn't going to leave him much of a place.
You'll also need to shade the dark haired lass much more to make it clear that she's behind the elf. The junction where the elf's axe seems to be chopping off her hand needs special attention.

f. Composition. The two people at the edges of the picture. Make their backs very dark. Like... black.
Either crop the left side so the white-haired person's elbow doesn't lead people's eyes off the picture or make both sides bigger (so there's space behind the blue-caped guy) and leave significant space between the edge and the elbow with very heavy shading on the elbow. (remember, their backs are very dark... fade to black)

Now, you've done an excellent job on the foreshortening. Now We're going to mess all that up for the sake of composition. (Hey, I told you it'd be a long road.)

the light needs to be closer to the center. straighten the guy's arm out a bit.
That way the beastie won't be cross-eyed.

The white haired person? take their arm and have it point to the light. and the blonde girl? have her point more directly at the light in a way that won't touch the beast.

Okay, now this is a lot of information. I did a VERY fast, VERY rough paintover to show you how the composition could be better. The two people on the edges need to work as framing. The viewers of this image need to understand more about the beastie. I messed up when I did the beastie's leg... it should be longer and closer. I felt there should be something on the ground also. Forgot to make the beast not cross-eyed.

Note that I did NOT change the size of any of the characters, yet now that the scope of the picture is bigger it's easier to see that the three middle characters are farther away, something I hadn't fathomed when I first saw your picture.

If the beast needs to be bigger I'd position him behind the two women in the middle, with his neck and body twisting around to look at the light. That way you can keep teh man's back as a frame and people won't go looking off the picture for the beast's body.

I still think you should have the arm of the person on the left pointing towards the light. Leading lines, yanno. I just couldn't bring myself to ruin your beautiful foreshortening when I was doing the paintover.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n238/Liriel_Baenre/art/paintover.jpg

I have rambled far too long... good luck!


On a final note: Don't give up on art.

[papostol]

The above reply is the great thing about showing your work for others to critique! Many of the things that you said never even crossed my mind! Like the viewer looking off the edge of the frame to find the rest of the bodies. I didn't realize that the composition was so bad. My list of things that I have to work on just doubled.

To answer your questions, Helenlyn:

I did use a graphics tablet to do this.
I drew several drawings with graphite, but switched to the computer, because with the computer it is easier to undo my many mistakes! I did do one drawing with acrylics, but the big problem with this is that it's hard to do gradients with acrylics.
I have made several drawings with the computer. I havent really touched the graphite since.
I do have to work on color values; it has always been hard for me. Especially when I have two light sources. I'm glad that you were able to tell that it was moonlight. The hair and skin tutorials that you recommended should help me out with the skin values.

UmtheHobo, I did go outside to try to look at objects under the moonlight. The problem is that there are so many artificial lights around that it spoils it.

Thank you for taking the time to make this critique, I have made notes.

Peter

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.