[Capt.FlushGarden]

Ok this is an attempt for a box cover wich was dumped so I took it home and "finished" it because I thought It might have something interesting innit, I was totally wrong. I just have to se this as practise, there's something with the faces I paint that sais "capt.flushy made this" I don't klnow what it is, I try to fix the eyes but it looks worse I try to shorten the face and blablabla, I even look in anatomy books hehe

and I bet some people who don't read this will say "the arm is way too long" but it'll take forever for me to fix that...

Just because there's a character there makes my backgrouds look like crap, I'm thinking of painting them separatelly or something so I won't screw things up in the future...
Crits would be greatly appreschiated. The sword is a photo that I pasted and painted on to make it match the painting somewhat.

Enough mumbo jumbo:

[Tomasis]

as well you have right.. your characters suck more than your backgrounds and things..

why not make it as Spooge Demon.. to try make that it doesnt show much of the eyes.. the eyes are very complicated things.. because only great masters can handle that.. (rembrandt, velazquez bl�bl�) you can do that but you need much time to spend on that..

it was interesting to look how you painted the things and background.. inspiring paint technique

one thing I want to say.. I dont like the lightning.. why not try make that the lightning fall from behind.. so you can hide more of the face maybe you wanted to show more of the cool sword and armors? hm
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out

[Farley13]

hey flushy - sometimes it's not what you've been staring at that hurts it's all the stuff arround it - like the eyes, it's not so much that they are wrong, but that it feels like he's looking to the left but his head is drawn straight on, I think if the nose and chin etc. where brought up and to the left just slightly (as in in perspective) looking 'head on' IMHO is very powerful and very hard to do without stiffness.

One thing I'd love to see are some self portraits, I'm always a sucker for those

Farley
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A bit more practice perhaps

[see]

i like it. I took a anatomy book to check face propotions. It seems the face size is ok.
But the right eye seems to look on the left side.
But i canN't see much wrong about face although i know what you mean when saying there's something with the faces I paint that sais "capt.flushy made this". I face the same problem everytime.

The background fits , it's cool. I would change the eyes , play around , add more details eg. cause i like the expression of the face. He looks somehow tired but happy after fight.

So ... when you spent much time on one painting it somehow sucks for yourself. I guess thats normal.

[Yuri]

I showed the pix to a friend, just for fun, and this is what he said:

"Hmmm... difficult. His problem is a slightly too big head, and the shadowing messed it up.

And the chin. He also should have added a bit of light on one side of the nose. The nose looks flat now.

To speak the truth... the lighting looks like it's from a different source all over."

When I asked why, he said:

"From where the light comes. Is it from directly above or from right-above or left-above. His cloak and forehead suggests left-above, but his arms and chest suggests another direction. Unless there is two suns.

But it is pretty good!

Perhaps a fire could cause such shadows, but then he should use a more 'yellowish' effect instead of white.

He said something about the arm being too long, but it is fine. It is once again the shadowing that messed up the arm."

Explanation from him as to why the shadowing messed up the arms:

"His upper arm shows the shadow from (our) right. His lower arm suggest either directly above him or from the left and his hand suggests from the left.

It is sometimes difficult to imagine that shadows play such a big role, but believe me, if he got it right, nothing would have been wrong with the arm. (Ok the hand looks a bit short on the one side, but that's minor) You don't want a light source to 'attract' your attention to the arm."
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[General Confusion]

Hey Capt.

Don't be so down on yourself. You have the right ideas going on there, what I feel is; you are going through the motions. What I mean, you are reproducing an impression of the face, and that is evident in the structure you've got established. The face is an intricate conglomorate of shapes and planes all intertwined into this mesh of levels that bounce and reflect light. I see what a lot of people do and I myself have been guilty of it many times (so it's an easy pitfall to get trapped in) and that is being lazy about recreating something we see everyday that of course being the face. And this laziness tends to give us a mutant crossover of realistic and cartoony elements that make mush instead of a face. For instance your eyebrows and eye sockets are more or less glorified elipses at this point. And that is where the cartoony and non-complete understanding of anatomy rears its ugly head. I say cartoony because when you draw Mickey Mouse, you do so by making a round ball with a line above it (well not exactly but what I'm getting at is cartoons dissect true anatomy to the most minimal of shape for ease of use in animation and quick reads of what those lines are supposed to be) and when you have a slight understanding of anatomy you sort of become a Frankenstein of sorts and mix your limited anatomy knowledge with quick solution cartoon tricks to achieve a goal.

The overall eye in particular, since you specifically mentioned it, is chock full of those interlocking planes I spoke of. Looking at a face straight on, the eyebrow could easily be translated to what you have going on, a half ellipse, (instead of a line that tapers off the side plane of the temple) or the eyeball a circle (instead of a acorn resembling shape that most eyes in a sediment state take shape in) and when you start to let these bad habits take charge of what you're doing, you get fooled by their evil ways... and leave your pic with that uncomfortable feeling (you know what I'm talking about).... "it looks like an eye, but then again it doesn't!" Typically it doesn't because the basic foundations weren't dealt with. Look at Spooges work, since I know your a fan of his.. and notice how he establishes the overall "big" shapes well. this allows for quick reads that tell the brain, hey, that looks right, and this could be achieved without the laborious detailing that tends to hurt pics alot....

but that's just it... you have the right ideas, but it's more important to establish the big ideas, like I said since the face is somethign we see everyday, even if we were shut ins with some obscure social disease, more than likely we have a mirror or two to admire our ugly mugs, so faces will always be inspected with the toughest scrutiny, so absolutely a proper form read is extremely crucial... similar to how you handle your backgrounds... you work big to small, and if you tackle the puzzle right, the detailing and form will reveal itself.. without you having to scale or squash or copy the image from here to there... you won't have to Frankenstein it....

think along those lines, and in time you're concerns with how you produce faces will fall to the way side...

another crit I have is: the body overall is painfully static.... as if the knight had embalming fluid for breakfast... (and not to be insulting, but from my experience in seeing your work, I think you'd appreciate hard nosed honesty to better your ability.. I know that's what I would want) but for bodies, and characterizations of.... I would suggest looking to some of the popular animators... Glen Keane, Glen Vilpuu, and many more (those are the 2 stand outs I could think of at the moment) and see how they treat the human body.. They do what I said before for the face.... they find the overall idea, and create a flow of form that almost resembles a good ballet or song... they have rhythm and flow that could be equated to lets say a handful of long ribbons flowing from the grasp of someone running on a windy day... almost a sort pf poetic beauty. Most illustrators IMO suffer from the "I'll photo a model and paint" (not saying that's what you did, but your pic reflects that technique) Sure I don't mean your guy should be dancing about with a bloody sword in his hand, but he should resemble again the big idea that his form is designed with fluid and rhthmic qualities that offer a wonderful recording of interlocking motion, even if he is standing stalworth after laying waste to a marauding army...and example.. what would your character be thinking in his present situation... more than likely he would be proud that he performed his duty well (whatever that may be) that his chest may be pushed toward the Heavens saying "that's right I'm bad!" now this is only speculation, but if you understand what I'm trying to offer to you here is.. think, understand, do... and I think you will be more happy with the outcome... the worse thing to do is replicate a Boris pic.... yekkkkk!!! by plopping a character in a scene with no reason why he's there... maybe he happened to walk by a backdrop in some studio backlot and a PA took his pic.... hmmmm that would be pretty funny to illustrate somethign like that...

ok, sorry I'm back... but to wrap up... you're on the right path... but you trail off before you discover why you're going the direction you're heading... understand your direction, stick to proper anatomy and you'll find your way out of the woods...

then you'll be rich, rich, rich..... and forget all us little people..

hope my ramblings maybe helped??? If I have the time, I can maybe translate my text visually, we'll see, right now it's almost 3 am by me and I'm tired

later and good luck

Bobby
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State of Confusion

[Matthew]

Hey

Ok I am gonna be killed for this and the most of you know how my skills are but I wanted to do this anyway, I have found it very good for practisiing with your picture Capt, I hope this is ok.
What I have seen in your Character pictures is that you can add more perspective and as mentioned above which I am experimenting with a lot now, Rhytm, I think it�s almost more important with Rhytm than to get the anatomy right. With the right Rhytm the picture gets really interesting.
Anyway, I added more perspective on your dude so instead of looking down he is looking up but if you want the guy to look into the camera you can focus his eyes towards the camera.
Also added downwards perspective on the sword, maybe looks like he is chopping his own feet, you could add upwards perspective on the sword so that it looks like he is slashing the invisible camera.
I hope anything of it helped, I will take down the picture immedately if you don�t want me to post the picture.



Thank you, see you
Matthew

[Capt. Fred]

The way you've done the face reminds me of what happens to me sometimes when I paint: I have a feel for the head volume I want to block-in, so do that, I blockin the head volume pretty roughly, and then it's not quite right so I alter it a bit and extend the shadow a bit wider here and darker there and sqaush this bit amd refine this bit and before I know it, I working on this head and understading it/thinking about it in terms of what it really is: different bits of colours and I' ve lost the whole feel of 3d, it's just a flat area made up of differnet colours, and that's when I just delete if I recognise that's waht's happenend.

Obviously,tho, you rule. So that's probably not waht's happening to you. I think.. and I've know you've heard allot of waht people think, but anway, I think that you should just scrap him and then sketch him in with construcitons lines and speedpaint him in real quick with no respect for the fact that he's human (so that you render him with the suceses that you render other animate objects and backgrouds). Then see waht it looks like.

I'd say the lighting looks a bit un realisitic and he looks a litte like a carboard cut out, and that by doing him a second time in roughrer and more quickly youll probably do him better.

I'd be really interested if you have any earlier, less finished versions of the carahceter, less refined, just to see if the problems you face now were evident earlier on.

I've been crude and blunt in my criticisms tho, this is a mega good pic, and if any normal forum member posted they wuld get mucho mucho praise and hardly and critcism, but you've just made a reputation for yourslef that's so darn good

gotta go.

[LePensky]

Honestly, I think this is an incredible image. I do think the head is a tiny bit too large, but you shouldn't make it as small as Matthew's edit in my humble opinion.

If anything, I would widen the hips somewhat, as they do seem rather thiun to me. I know they are slightly angled in the image, but still I would widen them.

Something that makes the head seem bigger is the fact that the hands are smallish, so increase them and the head will look better proportioned I think.

The eyes, hmmm, I quite like the way they aren't quite looking at the camera, they really seem to reflect a battle-weary character, as if he's looking at you but seems so distant....if that makes sense.

Stick with it, this could be wonderful artwork

[francmidi]

Hi Capt.,

I like color and lighting. The background-architecture looks a little like in the "Myth II - Soulblighter"-promo pic .

I didn't read the complete text here, so I don't know if my criticism is obsolete:

I don't think the head is too big. Imo the hands are little too small and ... there is something wrong with the arm . The knight looks like he is bending down to the viewer because of the low horizon. So that may be the main problem of the pose. How about that:


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[Frost]

John. Just keep working at it, and don't give up. This is better than what you have done in the past, so keep going. No such thing as intantaneous learning. Cheers mate! I like it.

[pierre]

I like it to but there seems to be some construction problems and the lighting don't seem unified. Envelop the light so it does not confuse the form.

This is just a very very quick repaint, some 20 minutes. I changed the drawing and the lighting just to give you an idea and maybe help a bit. I exaggerated the lighting to make it more clear, I would have made the background lighter, but I am a lazy bum. keep it up!

[Duracel]

(Edit: like your overpaint, pierre)

Well, i have to agree those critics about "less dynamic than speedpaintings" etc.. And well, i have to say, this is the first picture of yours i dont really like.

Hmm ... i dont know excact "what really is" the Problem of this picture - i could not put a finger right on it.
So i decided to do a paintover, just fixed the lighting and the head my way - i didnt know if it would work, just tried. And well, in my eyes the picture changed in a positiv way, so here it is. Perhaps you can get the right information out of it.


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Lars G�tze

www.duracel.de Gallery

Detailling a speedpainting is nothing but speedpainting in detail.

[Capt.FlushGarden]

Thank you so much for the crits you guys!

I think I tried to hard on this I should be making alot of eyesocket sketches before trying bigger stuff =))

I really appreschiate all the crits, they sound just right and I must say that I know about the rules of not painting a face head on but yet I do it, I always do stuff I know is wrong or too difficult, (for a noob like me that is)


Yuri: send my regards to your friend and thanx for the crits!

It's so dahmn wierd I think I can do characters I just "it's not so hard just try to do it with flo liker in the backgrounds" but everything I've learned just disappears from my head and there I am, with my cardboard cut-out knight
concentrating too much of what colors I should use on the face so I forget aboput the form, and when I try to fix the form I forget about the lighting, I wish I could put helmets and armor suits on all my characters......


Matthew, thanx for the overpaint, I understand what you mean, basically what u've done is to take away the cardboard feel, and no don't remove the image, keep on doing this nomater what other people say, and if it's good practise for you that's just great!

Francimidi: thanx, I guess I should have done one of those too!

Pierre, Amazing, seee, I wish I could do that, thanx for the repaint, I just love the light in it and It gives me an "Ahaaa" feeling! please post it oin the speed paint thread

Duracel, thank you! I se you painted so that the light gives the face more form, love that!

Tahnk you everyone for your great crits'n tips I've sucked up all the info
I wish I could answer everyone, but I have to go now


John

[Yuri]

No problem!
If you really have problems remembering stuff like that, perhaps you should make a note(I mean those adhesive notepads) and stick it somewhere accessible.
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