Originally posted by tacit
this should go on the front page
Yeah … I’d love too, but it’s way too dark. Looks like a lot of love went into the pic, but the points of interests are the explosions (which is about all I can make out of the pic clearly).
Needs some focused lighting and a bit more polish. This is one that hit my “I almost plugged it on the front page” list.
looks exactly how it would given the sky conditions I would say, not too dark at all, looks pretty near perfect
great job
:applause: Great Job. I love the look. A lot of work was put into this painting, that’s for sure!!! Awesome! Great detail.
Keep it up!
_cat
It would do the picture better, if you gave it more ambient moon light, or maybe some search lights on the mech to illuminate it.
Hi all,
Thanks for the positive comments and feedback.
Seems we all like a good dead city.
Apparently this one looks pretty dark.
I wanted it to be that way but…
I painted it with a dusky light that is pretty even… I can still see everything on my display.
Im using default calibration on an Apple HD cinema display.
My photoshop settings are the standard"Macintosh RGB".
“Mac RGB” tends to have lower contrast and be brighter than “Windows RGB”.
Which accounts for what Im hearing. To dark
I’ll try posting a version with “Windows RGB”.
I “saved for web”.
Its interesting to hear how people are seeing these images.
I suppose for the sake of clarity, on the web, regardless of an individuals monitor settings, Higher key work is more “viewable”.
Cheers R
R
Yeah, it’s frustrating. Any work you do in the bottom quarter of the luminance gamut may or may not be reproduced by someone viewing the thing on the web.
At least the background here at CGTalk is a nice dark achromatic grey . . . anybody else remember when it was red? eeeeecccchhh.
Nice piece by the way. Creates the impression of detail while staying indistinct enough that I don’t get hung up on it.
:eek:
I disagree with the comments that this is too dark. Yes, it is dark, but I think that is just the nature of the piece. I don’t think that every piece of art has to have high contrast and intense luminance.
It looks great on my monitor. I can see all the subtle details and I think that’s what makes this piece incredible. The explosions jump out first and then it leads your eye back into the piece to pick up on the full story behind it. It makes me want to stare at it for a while instead of wham-bam…ok I’m bored, whats next? Personally, I really enjoy a piece that doesn’t shove everything in your face and you have to read into it a bit. Its like a good book. I vote for front page!
Holy sh*t!! Really extraordinary piece of work, excellent environment! :buttrock:
T_M
wow, I’ve had to change my monitor brightness, but now it looks really good, maybe you should make it brighter or paint some highlights, nice work 
It looks shitty on my 1024 Sun monitor… It looks amazing on my Sony 1600… Nice work. Just do a Levels job on it in Photoshop.
Excelent work. I dont think it’s that dark. It’s just how it should look at dawn.
Congratulations. I think it deserves front page too
Just curious: I’ve also seen that pic at conceptart.org and it looks different, like the absence of the mech and the cropping of the picture and other little things. Is this the same artist and which picture came first?
If the foreground was illuminated by a unseen explosion in the foreground it would solve alot of problems and draw more attention to the mech. Then it would really be a killer piece. Hope Rec decides to go back into it. After all this work, a few minutes of dropping in a orange glow and foreground highlights couldn’t hurt. Right now there’s no main focus.
Shade- I followed the link you posted for the conceptart.org the thread. If you read through it you can see that it is the same artist, Rowan Cassidy, and the mech was added in after the original background creation.
So, I posted earlier saying that I thought this piece was not too dark and great the way it is and that I vote for front page. I thought this was so great that I set it as my desktop image. I still stand by my earlier comments, but since I’ve been looking at it a lot on my desktop, I starting thinking about the “too dark” and “no point of interest” comments and thought about a possible solution.
I thought that perhaps if there was an explosion behind the mech it would add more contrast and create a more defined focal point. A good dark silhouette on a light background can sometimes really punch up a piece. I went ahead and rocked a quick 10-15 min paint-over to illustrate what I was thinking…I, uh…maybe got a little carried away…heh. It turned out more rendered than I thoguht it would in a quick paint-over. But, anyway… Rec, I hope you don’t mind, I don’t want to mangle your beautiful piece. I think that it stands solid on its own, this is just a possible way to make it so you don’t get so many “too dark” comments. I’m sure that you could paint it better than me, but maybe I can inspire you to take your masterpiece a little further.
Cheers
Just to make this clear:
The piece below was originally created by REC and posted on page 1 of this thread, all I did was a quick paint-over on his great piece to suggest the possibility of putting an explosion behind the mech. I don’t want to take credit for his amazing work…look at his masterpiece here: original post by Rec
p.s. Rec, If you don’t like having my paint-over in your thread, let me know and I’ll take it off. Just wanted to present a possible option to inspire you. 