[opticillusion]

Let me start by saying this forum has inspired me

Truly. I look at raph.com all the time for inspiration. Sometimes it just made me relax and feel like someday I could be that good at 3d. Coming here...I mean wow. The help you people give! and the experience range is so vast, I think it's great you are all so helpful. So, I am working harder to get that homework done so I can work on the fun stuff



SO! My first project...which I wasn't too happy with was this dragon up there. took about an hour bus ride to draw, and about a night to color. it was a quicky so to speak. yet I was satisfied....but now after looking around here I think I can do better

So below is just a section of the eyes without anything added:



And here is what I've done so far:



First, any suggestions or comments you have that would help me would be greatly appreciated.

I've tried shading the white bit of the eye, but am having trouble making it look realistic, (even tho he's kinda cartoony, I'm still trying to get as real and textured as i can). So any help on that would be great.

And if you have any dragon pics that would helpful for reference, (especially when I go to tackle those cat ears

Thanks a heep :P

[This message has been edited by opticillusion (edited September 28, 2000).]

[gseegert]

Looks cool... I really like what you are doing with the green scales area. As for the eye, maybe some light pinks on the very outside? And maybe sharpen up the white highlight on the iris?

[opticillusion]

hmmm....i think it's getting there. thank you

[rdgraffix]

Here's my attempt at the eye. Hopefully you can get some ideas from it.



You'll notice that the bright area of the iris is directly opposite the stron highlight. This helps give the eye the right depth and texture.

Obviously, this is only my attempt, and I'm sure a lot of the others here could do a lot better.

Good luck with the pic, opticillusion.

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- rowan dodds
RD Graffix

[opticillusion]

There's the latest. i'm going to bed now

Any other suggestions?

Regards,
Patrick

[waylon]

I think one thing that's going to look kind of strange when you zoom back out and work on the rest of his head is the shape of the eye. The part of his eye that we can see looks spherical, that's kind of a given, even though the opening is squared off. But the way you re-drew the scales above his eye doesn't leave any room for his eye! I think this is especially noticable in the latest version, because of the way you squared off the left side. You may want to expand the scope of the pic a bit and make sure his eyes fit into the face.

One other little thing, it looks like the light source is coming from the top-left on the scales, but the gray shading on the left of his eye doesn't really follow that. A real eye would have a shadow cast on it from the heavy brow, and then the shading due to the curvature of the eye wouldn't be visible (since we can only really see the top half of the eye.) You might also want to add some color to the "white" of the eye, other than gray - make it a little yellowish from the lighting, or from the reflected light off of his beak.

Incidentally, this guy looks like he could be on the cover of one of the Robert Asprin MYTH-INC books... Don't know if you're familiar with them, very similar style art to your sketch.

[Matt Elder]

The image looks like it will be kick arse! if you pay this much attention to everything. My main issue was the shadows, or lack their of. The texture of the skin will be bumpy and cast minishadows on the next 'scale'. Yet here, the colours and highlight colours confuse the eye and it is difficult to tell where the highlight is and where the shadow is.

I know this is an up close view of the eye and the comment may be irrelevant if you zoom out to the final image but have a bit of a think about the shadows.

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See ya on da flip side
Matt
http://www.mattelder.com

[opticillusion]

http://www.metavisuals.com/Sijun/dragon_sections_1.jpg

There is the full-size cut-out of that most recent pic. I understand what you're saying about the eye not having room. If you look on the cartoony version, he's got a bit of the side of the head showing. Should I try putting the eyes farther apart or keep them pretty much like they are in the old pic?

I'll keep working on the coloration of the eye, as I am still not quite happy with it, and I'm understanding what you're saying so hopefully one of these times it'll just click And, is the shape of the eye what's not working, (the triangular inlet of the eye), or is it just that there's no side of the head yet to fit the eye?

About the shadows...I've only rendered the right side of his top of the nose. I think I'll have less highlights and more shadowing on his left side when I get to doing that. I don't know if that will fix the problem about the nose....so I'll have to see when I get that far

By the way... This is my first ever attempt at this kind of style! And, I'm loving it! No, I've never heard of that book before....will have to check that one out.

Am I going about the technique a bit differently than you would on this kind of style. I saw on Mr. Mullin's site that he blocks in the values of the whole image first, and then adds details. Do you think this will help, or should I just keep going scale by scale, looking back and seeing if it works...etc?

Regards,
Patrick

[newt]

If you keep working on a micro scale like this, you're going to run into problems. I'd work on large areas of color first, and make sure the overall design works before putting so much work into detail. It's tempting to just work on a little piece, but you loose track of the big picture.

[MonkeyBoy]

Newt hit the mark. Not much to add... (you already did a comp [the origional image]...which you might spend some more time on to help resolve any compositional issues that might arise. [such as your current lighting problem on the eye.])

You might find it expeadiant to work bolth eyes at the same time... more consistant too.

Regardless, keep up the work!

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MonekyBoy

(my muse is back)

[This message has been edited by MonkeyBoy (edited September 29, 2000).]