[JasonRainville]

Well I might as well toss this in here since I'm having so many problems with it.

The basics;
- Back cover
- Environment is a street scene in another plane with a starry/cosmic sky
- top area has to be more or less blank for text
- Tried to have the light be blue and from the front

What I'm not happy with;
damn near everything, but I'm hesitant to move a lot of stuff around at this point. What I really would like some help with is the values, colour and lighting of this thing. It's been giving me hell and while I finally have a coherent lightsource I don't quite know where to go from here.

Any help though no matter what it involves would be appreciated

[HandsOnFire]

sorry i didn't make any drastic changes, but I hope I addressed some of the issues. Still needs a bunch of refinement but I like it a bit more now, and I'm working to finish it up:

[GlennPearce]

Here's mine. I started the first one about 12 months ago. It tends to take me that long to refocus and work faults out. I'm trying to be less protective over the lines I've made. Just looking at everyone elses work in this thread explains things so much. Anyhow I just wanted to take part.

[Lhune]

Ugh, this was paintover hell. I tried really hard but I don't even know if it's helpful anymore. Either way, what was bothering me more than the lighting initially was the perspective issues. Now I may be completely wrong, but it seemed like the characters weren't all on the same level and some had a bit of an awkward position as opposed to the objects around them. I tried to correct it as well as I could but I had to move the characters around a lot and filled up the gaps quite sloppily. I also created a blank space in the lower left corner, not sure what you could do about that.

As for the lighting thing, I think the problem with it not appearing blue is there are too many warm colours in the light. Especially the bright red on the little guy in the middle, which I think should be more towards purple in the light you're aiming for. The blonde woman's outfit also has quite a few warm colours in it that I couldn't really fix very well, but I think you get what I mean.

[JasonRainville]

Originally Posted by Lhune

Ugh, this was paintover hell.

Hehe, now you know how I feel working on this...

Thanks a ton for the PO, the position of them makes a lot more sense and is easy enough to change

[night2]

I'm still working on this one ... i like the light but i feel like i'm missing something .. any tips ?

[JasonRainville]

Hey Freddy, no one's biting on yours I think because there's not really a whole lot to fix/expand on so I did a little anatomy paintover;

[Symphonic7]

Originally Posted by RClayton

Hello! I'm working on a picture from ref ... Im not trying to work from it exactly, I've tried to draw it as I would but use the lighting kind of as a guide . I've kind of struggled with the skin tone and because I've been staring at this so long now I just don't know whether its ok, whether there are major flaws, whether there isn't enough depth to the face... yada yada yada.. anyway any paint over crit would be gratefully received as I would really like to make this a piece I finish... as most go unfinished! Thank you

Here's my attempt
p.s. help with the eyes would be a great help.. h yeah.. I wasn't going to go with the eye makeup

Hey RClayton =) You had a couple of questions regarding skin tones and whether there was enough depth to the face among other things...I thought I could try to give some small directions =)



What I want to say first is that I think the colours that you've chosen compliment each other, so you've done a pretty good job there already =) And this is actually important, being able to pick out the basic colours in a picture that does not give an unpleasant vibe (unless that's what you want). Since I like the skin colour that you've chosen I did not change it when I overpainted. There are two steps I did which are very simple: 1. I added more vibrant lighting, 2. I added just a touch of pink to the cheeks. The lighting was done very quickly using the Dodge tool. If you look at the second image I've marked out with red lines the areas in which I used the Dodge tool. You could use white, but I think it would be more difficult to work with plus it would probably give off a different effect. The dodge tool simply takes away the colour that you've already used giving the surface area a more translucent feeling. If you were to choose using white, you would technically be adding more colour to the same area which might thicken and clog up the area instead, and in general make it more difficult to work with. The second part, adding a touch of pink (or maybe I should say a slight red-ish colour) was to make the skin and the face in generall look a little more vibrant. It's kind of the same as putting on a little make-up. You don't really need that much of it. I only did it on the cheeks and a little around the eyes. Just be careful to smooth out the colours so you'll get a natural transition (but I can see that you're already good at that ^^).

About the eyes, I don't really have any crits there, you've made a great start. Have confidence and just keep going, your lineart in general is pretty good. The eyes, nose an lips seem correctly placed. I did a small tweak with the nose bridge and the jaw line (plus I reduced her right cheek a bit), but this wasn't really necessary, more like preference. The tweaks I did was mostly to reduce the chin a little because it seemed a little strong and thus more masculine, and the nose was just to give her a little taller and longer nose bridge. When you draw the nose, just think of it as being a triangle in 3D almost, like the purple lines indicate. It might make it easier to flesh out.

In order to create depth you will need to add much darker shadows. Don't be afraid to use dark tones as long as you're able to smooth them out. In the ref picture that you provided the girl had a lot of make up on that you did not wish to use, but it still provides the perfect reference for shadows. Where she put make up on is where the shadows would naturally fall, because what she and you wish to enhance is the facial structure. For example, to indicate the eye-socket and giving off the effect that the eyes lie a little deeper in the face than the lips and nose, you need to put some darker shadows between the eyebrows and the upper part of the eye-lids. In the second image I've marked out the area in blue. Also, underneath the nose-tip it's usually darker due to shadow (mind the light source though). This is very common in Western faces, but don't always apply to Asian faces. Either way, shadows create the facial structure, use it to your advantage. Just a small tip; when you create shadows, be careful not to choose pure black or grey colours. It often makes the skin look dirty. Skin rarely works with black or grey colours. Use darker values (which can look more grey-ish) of the basic skin colour you've already chosen to begin with.

Lastly, I smoothed out her eyebrows and the black lines you'd created around her right eye in order to achieve a softer and more photo realistic look. But this is also preference, and not a rule of any kind. All in all, I didn't really do much to your line work. Basically, the first two steps I did would have been enough to enhance the picture. But I just get so horribly carried away sometimes....I also got completely carried away with the lips....I intended to just add a little red colour to make the lips more...well, vibrant (don't know how many times I've used that word now....), but then I started shaping them as well....Anyways, when you think skin tone, think about what makes a face look fresh and healthy (or when you blush, or when coming inside a warm room after being out in the could you can often see a delicate mixture of redness and a little pink on the face).

I hope I was of some small help. And good luck with your future projects! ^_^

[HandsOnFire]

Hey night, I thought yours looked pretty good and I thought I could help out, since that in a subject range I feel like I can handle:


bigger: http://iruka.iseenothing.com/collab/nightcritbig.jpg

The changes I made were pretty minimal. I feel like you had some hard edges from your original lines you were afraid to get rid of, and some soft edges you were afraid to harden up.

I gave the Hood an edge, around the inside, and took out the jagged black line around the outside. I darkened the area around the balls on his neck, so they didn't seem like they were floating. I also furred him a bit down there, to give them a surface to rest on.

For his face, i just added a little more definition, and put a few more painterly fur strokes around his mouth. I gave him a brow since i thought it belonged, and that the blank expression didn't really engage me. I gave him a bit of a tense look since his ears are turned back.

As general advice, unless its for a series of images or for a layout of some sort, I recommend against cutting the face in half like this in pictures, its a personal opinion, but I think it leaves something to be desired.

I hope this gives you ideas!

[raingarden]

Man, I keep getting beaten to these!

My big addition was some texture to the fur and a secondary light source.



I highly recommend making yourself a fur/hair brush. Just make a 500x500 new document and with a hard round varying the size between about 20 and 50, paint about a dozen black dots. Edit> Define Brush Preset and play with the settings for your new brush, be sure to turn the spacing way way down on it so that the hairs you draw are solid. I have pressure control set to Flow Jitter and Size Jitter, Minimum Diameter 50% and Angle Jitter set to Direction. I promise you'll use this brush all the time, you may even want to make a second version of it that's a little softer.

I hope that makes sense/helps Night2!

[kovah]

i havent had coffee yet an zombies bother me to the point of nightmares so ive never attempted to draw one before but goblins i like. But i gave this a go anyway

[ChuckMate]

[j-eli]

Originally Posted by GlennPearce

Attachment 20827

Attachment 20828

Hi Glenn, my take on zombie design 101.

[raingarden]

@ChuckMate I'm amazed how much we agreed in our paintovers of Night2's piece! Apparently he mostly needed the white outline, fur texture and a blue fill light.

[ChuckMate]

Originally Posted by raingarden

@ChuckMate I'm amazed how much we agreed in our paintovers of Night2's piece! Apparently he mostly needed the white outline, fur texture and a blue fill light.

hehehe.. yeah well, what he was missing mostly was a defined light source that tells a story. and since his initial work suggested some sort of a warm back light, a good choice would be to render the shaded part in a cool tone. and for some final "ying yang" touch, back to a warm focal point (the eye) to compliment everything else.