Medieval Village

[Gerald_Stanfield]

I really like the style, it reminds me of those Settlers games for PC. Look forward to some colour!

[thegiffman]

Hi Cerkuenik,



I love the subject matter, as should be clear by my own WIP featuring a Medieval Village (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=31&t=740718&page=1&pp=40). I really like the detail you have going on here - the hustle and bustle of the people and animals especially. If you're on a tight schedule, I don't suppose my advice will help you too much, in that the problems I see are with the composition itself, and won't be solved except by redoing parts of the drawing. But let me see if I can be any help to you here.

There is basically a "flatness" to the drawing, even though you have some neat foreground and background elements. It looks almost like building cutouts were pasted on. Part of this has to do with each building being from more or less from the same angle. Even if buildings were aligned along a street, perspective would make the viewer see them from slightly different angles. Take the chimney on the closest building - that is drawn so we can only see one side, and yet we should be seeing the building from a slight angle according to the roofline. Essentially, you're not displaying a deep understanding of the 3D shape of the buildings and the space around them.

Another problem is the placement of the forms. Coincident lines of different forms are a big no-no, if you want the forms to stand out and not get muddled. To show you what I mean, take a look at the areas I highlight here:

http://i46.tinypic.com/2vuhfrl.jpg

See how different buildings share the same edge? This makes it harder for the eye to judge them as different buildings, and makes the image feel flat.

Finally, and this is more of an artistic suggestion, I think it would be neat if you could pick a focus for the foreground to complement the castle in the back. I like the peasant carrying sticks - would if you placed him so his humble figure complemented the impressive castle? Just an idea.

Anyway, here's a quick sketch giving you a sense of how you might compose the picture a bit differently and fix some of these problems:

http://i48.tinypic.com/2rqhfud.jpg

I hope this helps. Again, I like what you are doing, which is why I'm spending time critiquing it.

[cerkvenik]

@Gerald_Stanfield - Thanks! I´m going to post the foreground, I really don´t know how much time I took do paint this, but I remember that tha thatch roof took me more than 6 hours...

Thanks for the game reference! Those illustrations are really beautiful! That style is what I´m trying to achieve.

_____________________________

@thegiffman
Hi! I looked at your "WIP" and really liked too! It´s really very teachful, specially the color theories.

I was in a tight schedule, but I discussed with the author and I know I´m going to work with a new schedule because I don't want to rush. it took too much time in the beginning because of my unexperience and my will to do it very realistic.

Thanks for the comments and critiques, I tried to use the rule of thirds, with the castle being the center of attention, But I can see now that there is some flatness and it´s not very dinamic. The sketch you did has a much better composition and I´ll try very soon.

But first, I´ll show what I´ve been painting so far. Please feel free to keep criticising it!

[cerkvenik]

here is the first part of the painting, I used stock images for the wooden parts, and photoshop brushes for the grass/bushes. The chimney is also used with a stock image. I prefer to define this illustration as "Digital Collage and Painting". As I said, I used some stock images to save time. But now I intend to paint it myself, using a reference ofcourse, but not using it directly.

http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/9902/01web01.jpg

[cerkvenik]

here is the second part of the painting, I used a lot of stock images here, church wall and roof, mill and bridge.

I feel I got a bit lost here because I didn't defined a shadow and light source, my plan is that this is happening very ealy in the mourning, that´s why it´s a bit dark, but maybe too dark for a child book.

http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/19/01web02.jpg

[cerkvenik]

At this stage I added the background, I used stock images for the tree and PS brushes at the mountains, the castle is just a sketch for further development.

I added an orange sky and a blue sky, but first, I wanted to post like like this so you guys could see the difference.

I think i got lost here, i didn´t like the result, this is where I want to research more.

http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/3406/01web03.jpg

[cerkvenik]

At this stage I added the peasants and a orange sky (stock) to give the feeling of a warm sunrise.

The sun of the photo is too low for the light I chose, I´ll paint it higher.

And this is where I am at the moment. In the overall, I think it´s too dark/saturated. I will use "Settlers" illustrations as a guide to ajust it. I hope to post it very soon.

Thx!

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/3261/01web04.jpg

[thegiffman]

Yeah, unfortunately it's a bit hard to get color back after you've blacked it out. I think, in the case both of your drawing and the more finished painting, you are trying to put in too much detail too early in the process. Better to focus on the large scale issues early on - general composition, main value contrasts, base colors, etc. - and then add the subtlties later once you've gotten the big picture right.

I am curious - what is the brown rectangle behind the town in the distance?

[cerkvenik]

Hi,
Thanks for the advice again, I really can see that I rushed for the details, I took too much researching to what kind I illustration I would do (I started with a comic style illustration but then I wanted to do a realistic one), then researching on medieval scenery.

I ended up not following a good methodology like you pointed. This job will be a great experience for me for the my next job. There are 12 illustrations. I hope I can post them too very soon!

the brown rectangla behind the castle?
I really don't know right now (lol), the building is from the same picture of the sky, i used this stock photo to set up the mood (I wanted to be early mourning).

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