[Freebooter]

I made the initial sketch a few days ago and already posted it in Speedpainting-thread. This is going to be Conan sitting on a throne as the king of Aquilonia.



I decided to work on it and see where it leads me.


Mind you that I took away some of the brightness before converting to jpeg.
My working psd is a lot brighter, with both ends of the grayscale clearly visible.

Any suggestions are appreciated, particularly in matters of lightning and rendering.

[Capt. Fred]

I wrote shit loads of stuff but lost it all for fucks sake.

Here is a painter over instead.

In short, your values seem to be too determined by the materials, an not enough by light and shadow.

The skin often doesn't go dark enough. Yes it is a generally lighter material, but where light can't get it still goes black. The skirt is also too limited in range of values.

Could benefit from starting by mostly ignoring materials and going for light and shade instead. Darkest dark will not necessarily belong to the darkest material, nor lightest light to the lightest -- that will be determined be the particulars of the lighting setup.

I also tried to make better sense of where the light would get to and where it wouldn't, using a shadow line in places to separate the two.



It's a great image of course.
Great job Freebooter.

[Freebooter]

Thanks for the crits Fred. I'd normally agree wholeheartedly but this time I deliberately tried to stay away from flattening, wide area "brightest lights".

I'm far from sure about the light source, but I think that the mini-sun in you pic is not what I want for this picture. I haven't really decided about the quality of the light (I know I should be already) and once I have I'll definitely think more about what parts will be illuminated.

But you had some very valid points in you post and I'll keep them in mind.

Here's todays worth of poop:


To Be Continued..

[Capt. Fred]

Oh gee, I thought that was a decorative-shaped window. My bad!
It makes more sense now.

[Freebooter]

Yeah a lil bit misunderstanding here.
But now I'm stuck. The curtains are rather boring idea and I can't help but to feel that the whole piece is a bit crammed. Should I expand the canvas and make background a bit brighter and some vague shapes?

[Bg]

There's too much isolated lighting going on for my taste, it makes the image harder to read.. connecting the lit areas would probably help. I have one suggestion for the throne, you could make Conan appear as tougher guy if the stuffed lion was bigger - to suggest that he has slain the beast or something I think it's the smallish arms that make the lion appear non menacing.

something like this maybe:







I like the simplicity of the first sketch, the way you painted Conan's face there is really nice!
_________________
www.TimoVihola.com
www.MountainSheep.net

[Mikko K]

I like some of the things that Timo did there, connecting some of the values (instead of separating 'em logically) helps to unify the piece. I'd still explore and test out separating the light & shadow, something that Fred did, but without overexposing the skin that much (it looked like metal there).

Ville, look at the chest in Timo's version. It looks much more like skin because of reduced contrast. Showing every damn vein and muscle don't help the big picture at all, IMO.

[Freebooter]

Hmm I really think this is going to wrong direction. Reading all your suggestions I tried to change the mood of the pic with nil success.

[Freebooter]

Thanks for the tips Mikko and BG.
Sorry for the slow reaction, my mind was set on other things this week. My and Mikko's mutual grandmother passed away this friday.

But I'm back with this piece of crap and I need it finished by tomorrow for we'll have a portfolio viewing at our Art University.



Any quick suggestions..

[Freebooter]

Newest version before going to bed. My Photoshop CS2 crashed eight times tonight. Infuriating.

[eren]

Last one is very nice ...but i think you can add some area on left and right...for revealing the guardian(soldier) on the left......and maybe you can add statues(mythologic) the background... keep goin : ) nice job

[Freebooter]

Nah, I don't think I'm going to keep going.
I learned a lot doing this pic but I have no desire to come back and address all the problems in it.

Thanks but let's leave his thread to die...

[3nasty]

looks damn good, for me