Hi everyone, I’ve been working on this one for the past week and I’d like some critique. Obviously I still need to do a lot of work, and get around to making his hands haha, anyway here it is.
It is supposed to depict a physically augmented fleet captain of earth watching a holovid of the space battle taking place right before the destruction of earth via a gravitational tractor. The last surviving gravitational tractor directs the captured comet into a collision course with earth. The battle taking place is already one of vengeance, as even if the gravitational tractor is destroyed, nothing can deflect the comet. The pictures to the left and right are the before and after scenarios respectively.
Is this image meant to stand on its own, without accompanying text to explain the narrative? If so, then no one will understand the narrative because you haven’t provided the necessary visual clues to tell the story with clarity. But if it’s meant to accompany text, then it’s less of a problem because people will just read the text to find out about the story.
Accompanied by text. However, don’t let that stop you from critiquing it as an image in itself (elaborating on visual clues, etc.), i’m sure the perspective that would lend would help, and I doubt if everyone viewing the image will bother to read the text.
\Without drilling into too much detail and nitpicking, I think the overall composition is a bit awkward. The right hand panel is overwhelming because of the colors, and it being lower throws off the balance. The center panel loses focus as the center of attention because the side panels are brighter. Your eye wanders around the middle, instead of being taken through the story. The middle panel is also very cluttered, and it’s hard to make out what’s going on.
Thanks BillyWJ, composition has always been a large weak point of mine. I kinda figure with a comic book type configuration, multiple panels with multiple focal points would look OK. Plus I really like making spaceships haha.
Here’s an updated version, reduced the clutter in the middle. Darkened the outer-panels, and centered and shrunk the right planet.
Now, let’s talk about text. The human eye is drawn to text first, and the western eye reads left to right. The text in the images grabs your eye, and ping pongs it between the two words, skipping right over the main image, which goes against the whole concept behind your layout. So, let’s talk fixes - the easy one is to remove the words. The next idea, if you want to keep them, is to create some sort of triangle with all the elements, the corners being the figure and the two spheres. How about only shoing half the planets, the left one entering the frame from the left, closer in, and the right entering from the right, closer in. It would “bookend” the figure more, and allow you to highlight the figure more.
I would stop work on the painting, and work this out with block shapes in another drawing, just uses the most basic shapes, no details, circles, squares, and rectangles, and work out a balanced composition that does what you want - puts the figure in the middle of the two side panels, connecting them both. I know you might be frustrated, but this is the nuts and bolts of illustration. You have a good idea, so I want to help you make it work!
I took a stab at the suggested triangle composition with just the planet halves:
I’m not really that sold on it though…
I think I’m probably just going to take your advice to just completely start over. Maybe not include a portrait this next time, I think maybe that’s what’s throwing it off, too static.
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