Angel without a name - Help requested

[Mboehman]

First off, her torso is too long. Even after you change the legs it will be too long. Second, she needs a waist and hips. Right now her body goes straight down like a man's. I would suggest getting one of your friends to pose so you can get the anatomy right. Or get a reference photo, but you need something to make the person look realistic.
Other than that, I really like the background. Hope to see it finished.

[DArcy1]

I would add - pick a light source. Now. Is it above her, below her, in front or behind? This will determine where all your shadows will be, so you need to be clear on where it is. All those feather details will have to be consistent with the light. Your other light source is the ambient light, in your case the rust colored background - that color should find it's way into all your shadows.


If you can get a friend to pose for a reference, make sure the light is coming from the right direction. Don't use a flash on the camera - it will screw up all the shadows.

Or just go here: http://characterdesigns.com/index.php?sitepage=photosets
Pick a photoset from the dropdown list - there are hundreds of photos you can use as reference and I'll bet you can find something pretty close to what you need. It's a wonderful page :-).

Finally, just a personal thing: Those wings are way too bright and saturated..

Hope this helps.

D'Arcy

[Terratsumetai]

Holyhell, I'm glad I came here. I love the place already.

Mboehman, thanks for the torso comment; I see what you mean. Hips do indeed need work, but I'm not sure about the waist. I'll be sure to experiment a bit with curves. I do actually have a friend who I'm basing this on, but sadly I don't want her to know about this and because of it sadly won't be able to pose for this.

DArcy1, you're brilliant and an art resource on itself. Where do you get this stuff? Lightsource is picked; upper right front. I'm currently using a Lens Flare as a guideline to check if shadows look natural (which actually turned out to be surprisingly useful). With the site you gave me I should be able to figure out ambient light as well. And no worries about the wings, they're not gonna stay that way. I actually wanna give this a pretty dark atmosphere with a light shining down on her. Any coloring at this point is still a small preview of how it will look later on.

I started out using Gradient Maps for coloring, but with the wings especially found it being a REALLY bad idea, so I'll switch to conventional coloring or some other technique that I can work with.

"Model" (http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e267/InuOokami/True%20Pic/101_0074.jpg)
To sketch out an idea a bit: the girl on the left is what the angel would most closely look like if she were to exist today. Sadly that picture is also one of the crappiest references you could have when trying to make a work of art. It's the only full body pic I have of her. The girl is about 16 in the picture, while I want the angel to appear around the age of 16-19 at the most.
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Thanks for the help, both of you. I'll try to update as soon as I can.

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