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Chad Weatherford · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:27 am

Well, with a deadline pretty much on top of me, I have a mess on my hands with this illustration for the back of a CD digipac. I've looked at this and tweaked it so many ways and my eyes are crossed.

something really really bothers me and i can't tell if it's structural, color, values, a combination, too much blur, not enough blur...edges or what.

Any feedback/suggestions would be much much appreciated, because I trust the instincts of the people here and i basically i have no time to work it out on my own.

faeklone · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:55 am

My two cents is that the background of the buildings and such is drawing your eye away from the subject matter, the person being chased. I do like how you have the face in the center of several lines to draw your eye to it.

My guess as to why it's not working is that the figure is competing for attention with the buildings in the background. Since it would be a bit foolharty to tone down the buildings, the next step is to look at the face. I think it's not working due to the car and the face being a bit too small. If you take the vehicle and make it even 1/3 bigger, placing the face in the same spot, the attention should be drawn more to the foreground and not to the beautiful buildings in the background.

It may or may not work, but that's what I'm thinking will do it.
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Chad Weatherford · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:13 am

Thanks for the suggestion faeklone! ...appreciate the insight. I'll give it a shot. I do think that you are correct in the competing aspect.

Tinusch · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:28 pm

I was going to give the exact same diagnosis - my eye is constantly pulled to the top right corner. I was thinking of maybe just toning down the contrast up there to give it a sort of hazy remoteness.

Chad Weatherford · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:41 pm

thankyou so much for the prognosis guys! You're both legends! I'll post an update soon. Anybody else wanna chime in?

watmough · Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2007 2:16 pm

yup,im with them ,eye needs to be directed abit more,heres 2 minute paint over.

Capt. Fred · Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 3:35 am

I have some ideas, I hope some part of it will help, Good luck.

MaLoRuM · Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 11:09 pm

The bottom left of the picture is mostly black and filled with dark colors so your eye immediately is drawn to the only place WITH color which are the buildings in the background.

What Capt. Fred did was balance the colors out and draw your eye back down to the focus of the picture.

I was wondering why you had giant headlights on the front of your little spaceships but no lighting going on at the bottom of your picture. It was instead all black.

Sweet pic, cant wait to see how you improve it
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Freddio · Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:44 am

hmm,

sorry, I think all I did was mutilate your image!

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Petri.J · Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:56 am

You have too much contrast in your painting. Concentrate your contrast to the focus point and that will fix the problem that the buildings seem to be too close from the camera.

Mikko K · member Member # Joined: 29 Apr 2003 Posts: 639

I like what you got going on there, so I just tried to mess with it a bit. Take this stuff with a grain of salt, I'm pretty tired now Wink

Gotnospoons · member Member # Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 124

I think Watmough and Mikko did a great job. Desaturate the back ground more so our eye is focused on the main character and the action.

Good job
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neff · Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:50 pm

I've quite another Problem with the Picture... i think the head of the Kid is placed wrong.
IMO you have to see his shoulder on the same high than his head and i dont know why he turns his head to the left? I think the street is his own horizont to look at.
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Telekon · junior member Member # Joined: 02 Nov 2004 Posts: 44

Also the facial expression seems dazed or blanked out. If he's being chased and the vehicle requires concentration to drive, it would show on his face. A look of determination and focus would help this image. As it stands he looks like a Harry Potter character after having been told something confusing... Razz

Just my .02 Cents.