I know I need to finish the facial details, but aside from that what could I do to get this looking better. Is there a step like this in your normal painting process and where do you go from there? Is there anything horribly off about this that needs to be reworked?
Thanks
You need to work on your anatomy.
The way the hand wraps around the tree trunk is wrong, because you are not considering the fact the hand has thickness too, and with the way you have painted it, the palm would be intersecting the tree trunk. The fingers are also placed too uniformly and looks unnatural.
The size of his ankle is a bit too thick, even for a stylized figure, and the angle of the lower right leg is odd–pointing at a very uncomfortable direction.
The way his left foot is placed on the cliff edge is odd. Is the rest of his foot flat on the ground and his toes wrapping over the edge of the cliff, or is he tip-toeing?
Stylistically, the look you have is kind of flat, sterile, and without interesting variations like different surface properties, natural discolorations, color shifts, or effects of color bleed during radiosity. You also tend to render all turning of forms with almost equal rate, instead of differentiating between softer turns and sharper turns. You also don’t seem to have any intentional management of your hierarchy of edges, such as sharp, firm, soft, and lost edges.
I am not a profi by far. However I noticed one major thing. I observed the image while reading critique by Lunatique (as usual perfect) and the whole time I was thinking that the ogre is IN FRONT of the knight and the tower. The I realized that the ogre is in background trying to hit the knight. Therefore I recommend to study values in grayscale (foreground objects are darker and background ones are lighter). I can bet my pants that if I convert this picture into grayscale and than sample values from knight/tower vs troll/rock, both will be very similar.
I suggest trying to alter the poses. It’s not very dynamic. It’s all well and good looking at shading and facial features but if there’s little or no action in it then it’ll just look like a undynamic picture that’s been worked on for a long time.
There isn’t much perspective in it, so I think you could add that too to make it more dramatic.
The knight on the tower would look better if he was standing in the tower, rather than on the very top of the battlements. And the brick work on the tower needs some attention. If it was built like that in real life it’d fall straight down again. Each row needs to overlap, do a quick mage search for castle walls or something and you’ll see what I mean.
Here ( if it uploads OK 
) is a quick sketch over. Not perfect by any means, but just to give you a suggestion…
This is great help!
Lunatique-I’ll get on those anatomy issues
Flekouner- I’ll add a layer for some atmosphere.
NikLG- I’ll fix the brick arrangement. I used a 3d model to help with my perspective and I just quickly threw a brick texture on it. I’am embarrassed that I didn’t notice the bricks, but I knew something was off about it.
Should have an update tonight, thanks.
Here is the image I promised yesterday. I added a light blue layer over the giant and his mountain to give him some atmospheric perspective. I took some photo reference for the hand to give a more realistic pose. I think it is much more realistic now. The bricks got painted over with a more proper stacking pattern.
Let me know whats next!
Getting better, but you don’t have a very interesting composition, and the color composition needs work.
Also, the human figure is not credible. Think about it…if you’re wearing a shield, and facing a monster who’s going to hit you with a tree - wouldn’t you want the shield between you and the monster? I’d switch the shield to the other arm, so he’s behind it, put the sword in the other hand (A pike would make more sense here, or one really big honking sword), and give the figure a more crouched, defensive posture, which would also add some tension to the composition, which you want and need.
Another thing to consider - can you not make the human more “heroic”, so it looks like he even stands a remote chance? At least blow his armor out of proportion. Look at World Of Warcraft for that, they’ve gotten really good at it.
A couple of things about castles: They very rarely were made of uniform bricks - or if they did put the time in to cut blocks, and had the stone available, it was rarely straight - straight lines are hard to find in castles.
Here’s a reference to what I mean - most castles, especially towers, were made of fieldstone, mortared.
http://www.photographyblogger.net/great-castle-pictures/
The tower is a little awkward, too, the bottom edge of the top part should be out further, and the wall of the lower part should be a straight line to the top part - the little bits with arches below were to support the floor and wall above it, not for decoration. Here’s a real one:
Lastly, for now, you can’t have more fun with the rocks the monster is on?
I didn’t have time to fix everything but here is an attempt. I added some detail to the cliff. I also started a new pose for the warrior, hopefully a little more heroic.
I went back to my original character pose, I just beefed up the armor and made the proportions more heroic. I also tweeked the colors overall as they were too saturated. I am next going to try and make the bricks more irregular with the liquify brush.
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