smrr's P.T [paintover thread/physical therapy, who knows! n_n]

[smrr]

DQ_Nick - Alrighty man, so firstly, I really dig the design, pose + perspective of the character. For real, top level stuff \o/ ! I can see this guiy in a game/movie for sure!

What's letting the piece down is the rendering. 
It looks as if you were going for a style that left the linework in.... but in some areas, you painted over the lines?  I was confused by this and concluded that you wanted to paint the dude realistically, but couldn't be bothered haha. Idk I could be wrong though lmao

So honestly, the biggest change I made to the piece was painting over the solid black linework as much as possible. I wanted to try and make the character *pop* and feel like he could be standing in front of the viewer (if I allocated more time, this probs could have been possible). 

Before I got into that, I noticed that your darks were real dark, so I used a level adjustment to lighten the image, then got stuck into it. When your values are either too light or too dark when you're in the middle of working on a piece, you become limited in the way that you can work. I always find it better to work in the mid-range values for the majority of the piece - adding the darkest darks and lightest lights toward the end - and sparingly. Although this could ofc vary from piece to piece. But with a general top-down lighting scenario, you're set. 

You pretty much nailed the matte metal look and feel, I added a little bounce light to the underside of the armour to enhance the form "coming out" if you get me. I used the light grey from the background to achieve this. I noticed you added little scratched details to the metal, which was a cool addition - I do feel like any details of the sort should be added after you've described the form thoroughly though.

Paying attention to edges could really breathe life into this piece (read: yeah, I may have went a little overboard with my application lmao yolo) - add dynamism through playing with the focus. E.g. I blurred some edges around the bottom half and sides of the dude to create a focus in the mid-top half of the design. Though, if you're selling all components of the design to a 3d guy - certainly do it subtly. 

Couple of quick notes:

*the cast shadow underneath looks half-assed D: make sweet love to every bit of the piece. Make it look professional, because you are professional - that's the mentality you should make stick. What would a shadow look like irl? (Note: always ask this question - super helpful)

*circular pattern designs - removed and added ellipse shapes > reduced the size > ctrl+J to duplicate as many as I wanted > repositioned where I wanted them > locked layer transparency > painted over and considered how light would fall around the rim. Why do this instead of drawing each by hand? Looks more man-made/technical, repetition in adesign creates consistency. Would have used ctrl+T > distort to fit the right perspective if I had the time too.

*probably could have added ambient occlusion underneath where his right hand is resting on the plate.

*most important of all - understanding how to paint realistically all comes from a solid understanding of how to paint a sphere under different lighting setups, as well as with differing materials i.e. metals, wood, plastic, etc. Nail your understanding of that and rule the world.  
__

So yeah that was basically the gist of it, I hope this has helped you out even a little bit - my apologies for the late reply once again --- annnnndddd yeah, go kick ass and chew s'more bubblegum \o/