I’m re-visiting old concepts and trying to make 3 styles for each. Cartoon/ Realistic/ and Ultra-Realistic.
I’m doing this one first because it is the easiest.
As far as Critiques are concerned, I am interested if a 3D modeler sees enough information in this image- how it could be fleshed out more if not, is it too dark for a Concept piece, should the lines be more defined?
Of course other critiques are >welcome< but those are the ones running through my head.
Created in Photoshop CS4.
If you want to do something that a 3D artist can work from effectively, it’s best not to use coarse, heavy outlines like you did, because they are too vague to differentiate between edge types. You need to make it clear what type of edges we see, such a furry edges and hard-edges. When your edges are all kind of similar, we can’t tell. The dark lines also obscure details inside of the silhouette contour, and we can’t tell what is going on such as your anatomy details. Readability is very important–make sure everything is clearly readable without any vagueness–be it anatomy details, clothing folds, fine surface details such as textures, etc.
Also, if this is meant for pre-production, you should choose poses that are more neutral so we can see the figure’s overall proportion clearly. When the figure is hunched and limbs raised at an angle like that, we can only see the foreshortened proportions, and that is not good for readability.
You lit the figure in basically a back-lighting, and that isn’t optimal for readability, because you’re creating a dark silhouette. The best lighting is a 3/4 front/side/top lighting that models the forms effectively, without being too drastic, but pretty much any kind of lighting that makes the details visible without creating unusual lighting angles (such lighting from below) will work.
Put yourself in the shoes of a 3D artist having to work from a piece of concept art. What would YOU like to see that would make your job easier?
These might seem like common sense, and strangely, so much of what makes better art are really just common sense, except people aren’t capable of realizing that until they are taught to think with common sense as artists. It’s kind of ironic, but that’s just how it is. 
That is a great reply, thank you Lunatique. I will re-visit this character and re-post here shortly. (I…I was doing wrong)
Before your response I tweaked this image. I posted it on another website as well…received critiques, though, non as direct to my inquiries as yours was. I’m glad I posted here too.
Anyway here is the old image tweaked a little:
I’m tweaking this character a bit more. Trying to emulate the toon style akin to “Young Justice”. I’m also creating this more as a production art piece, something a 3D character modeler would find useful.
This is the first of five images that will be on this sheet.
Created in Photoshop CS4.
If you want a 3D modeler to be able to work from your concepts, then you must avoid using stylistic shorthands such as spotting black and flat values, because the modeler must see the exact turning of form. It is the rendering phase that will give 3D assets a stylistic look such as cel-shading. You can do style guides that show the target look desired, so the person responsible for tweaking the rendering algorithm can use it as a reference to set the renderer’s parameters. But for the actual concept art given to modelers, you need to be as clear as possible. When you have solid flat shadows like around the eyes, we can’t even tell if it’s actually shadow or a dark patch on its fur. And when you use flat shading like that, we can’t discern the exact turning of a form–how much curve or how sharp the turn is.
-Its funny, I did it that way from a suggestion at a different website.
-I am trying to build portfolio images in different styles. I just figured this was the bast way: Cartoon/ Realistic/ and Ultra-Realistic.
-Thank you for your guidance and critique.
You have to separate your need for a portfolio that displays a wider range of styles from your need to produce concept art for 3D modelers to work from. They are two separate needs that require separate considerations. Don’t arbitrarily merge those two needs into one image without understanding the issue.
You can put different styles of illustrations and style guides in your portfolio, but for concept art that is meant to be for 3D modelers to work from, you must make sure there aren’t too many stylistic excesses that obscures the turning of forms that 3D modelers must be able to see clearly from your image in order to reproduce as a faithful/accurate 3D version. Like I said, you can produce stylized illustrations and style guides to show what the final render should look like after the 3D model has gone through textures, lighting, and NPR (Non-Photorealistic Rendering) to achieve that target style.
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