[RayKast]

Finally finished, spent almost 7 hours on it.

Crits welcome! Please reply.

[RayKast]

um, okay, no replys. It seems that you need a naked lady in your pictures to get any replys around here.

[Probus]

not for me. the guy looks awesome, good work. Good lightning too. You need to do something about the hand, it looks too flat and too much space between fingers. the mouth of the big alien looks a bit weird.

[Tiger Eaten]

Good work!

I can see you must have agonized over the lighting for quite some time. I think that your have a really good start in understanding light sources and color. You also have a nice concept there in terms of layout.

Rather than crit a single aspect of this work, I would like to try and give some general advice. What I see in your work is something that I myself am VERY guilty of and thats of trying to run before you have mastered walking. I think that you may have been influenced by some of the great work that you have seen on the board, as have we all are from time to time and I can see that you are eager to try some of the more advanced aspects of rendering a scene, i.e lighting. You should have been happy with this work when you finished it but perhaps in the back of your mind you had a little voice saying "its good, but why isn't it looking like dhaib's or craig's work?"

I have met some fine artists in my time, some of them seemingly born with a knack for drawing, others who simply worked damn hard at it, but in both groups there was a certain level of 'nose to the gridstone' sheer work and daily refinement at play. Draw, draw, draw. Most people who are good at drawing happen to enjoy it and therefore do it A LOT.

(errr...I think I will get to the point....)

Don't concentrate on a single aspect of drawing at the exclusion of all others. i.e. Its good to study muscles but hands are just as important. Its good to work on lighting but don't forget about form. Try to look hard at this picture and make a mental list of all the things that you think you need to work more on, then go get a couple of art/reference books and try to work on them a bit. Work on hands or hair or eyes and give us a nice post of your attempts!

Final note: Don't try to use a 3d modeling program as a shortcut to drawing. It is VERY hard to get the two mediums to merge together and the end result usually disappoints. Even photoshops perspective transforms are iffy.

As I said, good work! Keep at it. Your 7 hours were well used.



[ October 21, 2001: Message edited by: Tiger Eaten ]

[RayKast]

Thank you Tiger Eaten for the advice. You sayed it dead right. This pic was light driven. I was trying to make the lighting dramatic. And yes, the buildings were taken from from some pictures. Then I used a bunch of gradients and HSBed the hell out of it. Heh, its really that noticable, isnt it? I'll take your advice to heart my friend.