[rhombus]

i did this illustration by combining eight or nine photo references, hand painting parts of it, and adding some filters for texture. all done in photoshop. enjoy! c&c are welcome.

[Lukiaz]

Shit man thats awesome!.
SO.....different.
The whole thing works reallly well I think.
The washed out colours give the piece and old school feel and it reminds me of work I've seen before.
Did you get influenced by a style you'd seen from somewhere?.
Those girlies don't seem to bothered about being chained up....they almost appear quite randy.

[swampbug]

excellent!... I like this one. Good choice for photos. They fit nicely, and the color, or lack thereof, is nice and different. I think the stringy lines on the left girls hips and legs are the best style happening here.

[Basement bound]

I really like this piece reminds me of plate colouring. When they used to place emultions onto glass and then paint them, you know before they had colour film processing. Nice.

JA

[Icannon]

hah, this is great!

[Shannen]

maybe it's just me, but there's something off about the girl on the left ...

but aside from that, the piece as a whole is quite nice. I for one really enjoy the pirate, and the style is very original. If you had a whole series of images in this style it would be fantastic!

[Basse_Ex]

I'm sorry, but I don't like it at all.
There too many filters there, and they don't mix very well with the hand painted parts. The whole thing looks very fake in a way. It doesn't hold well together.
The figures ain't connected to the ground, and they look like cheap photocutouts. And what are they all staring at? And does it seem like they have bodypaint instead of clothes?
The treasure seem to be in another perspective than the rest. The seagulls seem to have gotten themselves stuck in a net.
I'm real sorry to be nagging on like this, but I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think there was something good in there. You seem to have alot of potential, it's just that you've gotten a bit carried away in the filtering process.
The best parts of the picture is the vegetation, which I believe is handpainted. They work very well. If you could manage to make the rest of the picture in the same, or a similar, style, it would be awesome.

You have an excellent starting point here, if you should for instance choose trace and handpaint the picture, but as it stands now, I would say it doesn't work.

Sorry

I know it's terribly hard to do this kind of photocollage, mixing it with organic elements. I had a job some years ago where I had to do the colour on a photocollage thingie for a internet museum exhibition about tattoos in old norse culture(The amount of evidence they had amounted to 1 piece of bone that looked a little bit like a needle, heh). The lady in charge forced us to mix linework, with photography of old rockers in stoneage outfits, and handpainted colors. It's not a very pretty sight, but the lady in charge was extremely happy with it(there's no accounting for bad taste).
If you want to check them out to see how to do this kind of thing, and more importantly how NOT to do this, then here's the links:
web page
web page
web page

I dunno if it helps, but anyhow...

Best of luck.

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: Basse_Ex ]

[rhombus]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I appreciate you taking the time to comment.

Lukiaz: I'm not sure what inspired this. I guess it was just the curiosity to see if I could take so many different images and collage them into a unique illustration. Basement Bound is correct in saying that it looks like plate coloring, that was partially the final look I was going for. So I guess you could say it was inspired by that process.

Basse_Ex: Thanks for the crit! I did get carried away with the filters a bit I also liked seeing your photocollage work. Cool stuff, I think they turned out pretty well. As far as this piece, I wasn't really looking for a "seamless" reality. I wanted more of a stylized illustration that was expressive and slightly odd. Maybe I didn't go far enough in the illustrative direction?

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rhombus ]