Cinematic close up WIP stuck

#1

Hello guys.

I am something like an amateur and I made only like 3 original arts. Its been 4 years since I uploaded anything. So I am working on something for a while now and as you can guess I want to to be amazing. It’s just that I am stuck with this image and I am unsure how to finish it.

I am not sure if its smart for the eye color to be the same as the rest of the image. For now it kinda seems boring and flat to me. Should I change the eye colors or background color? And what should be the way to get the best results.

Right now it’s like 80% finishes and the full image is like 3500x resolution big. Still need to go into the details a bit later bcs there are a lot of tiny things that need polishing
I would appreciate any feedback you can give me.

So I made a new background and added a bluish tint on the whole image. Auto color option on everything. And changed the helmet a bit. Still unsure about the background and if i can improve the eyes

Thanks

#2

Can anyone help?

#3

Who is this character and why are you showing a closeup of her face? What are you trying to convey with this image? What is the narrative here? What are the emotions you want to express?

Whenever you need to make creative decisions, you first need to establish exactly what you’re trying to communicate, then every decision you make will be based on creative vision you’ve established for the project.

If there’s no story, no emotion, and no particular reason why you’re doing this closeup, and it’s all just visual for the sake of having a nice image, then I would suggest giving the eyes a more unique color so they stand out more due to the contrast with the more subdued colors in the rest of the image.

#4

THe close up is bcs I want to get the movie cinematic shot. To make it dynamic like its that part when girl appears and Bam action starts. I didnt really think that much about this work bcs I changed sooo many things

I do agree about the eyes and I was thinking of making them bright greenish or jellow. Whatcha think?
And would a orange background work better? I am thinking of changing that since it looks too cold

#5

You have to know more than just “when girl appears and BAM action starts.” If there’s any kind of a story in your image, you’ll need to stop thinking only like someone who draws and paints pictures, and also think of yourself more like a storyteller or movie director. Think about who this character is. What is she feeling in that moment right before the battle? Is she terrified? confident? Why is she fighting this battle? For ideology? For patriotism? For survival? Why is there a battle in the first place? What’s the cause of the conflict? What do you want the viewer to feel when they look at this image? What do you want the viewer to to think about? These are all things you have to consider if you want to portray any kind of story or emotion in your artwork. Once you have thought about all that, you’ll have a much better idea of what you should put in your image.

All these factors will determine what colors you should use, what kind of lighting, what kind of composition, what kind of facial expression, what kind of background, etc.

#6

I wasn’t aware that someone has to think about all of that during creation. I thought that was only meant for movies. Creating tones based on what type of movie it is. I should have thought about that before because now I can’t change a lot of things. Maybe just the eyes.

And btw I messed up. I want to remove a lot of light from the face but when i color pick a color it just picks the color from the noise I added, I merged the noise layer with the skin layer -_-. Any way to bypass that thing? Or i just have to do it by visual

#7

If you want to be a good visual storyteller, then you have to learn to think like a storyteller and not just someone who makes pretty pictures. There’s a reason why some images can really affect us emotionally or resonate with us intellectually–they are by artists who also care about what they are actually communicating with their images.

If you need to alter the lighting, you’re going to have to actually repaint some areas. You can use some clever workflow to get it close and then you’ll probably still need to repaint some things. For example, use multiply, screen, and color layer blend modes in Photoshop to alter the values and colors for only the areas you want to alter, and then on another normal layer do another polishing pass to make it all appear seamless. I have demonstrated this technique before in my workshop (link below in my signature), and it allows you to make comprehensive changes that you can’t do from just typical image editing, yet it also saves a lot of time compared to straight repainting.