Darktiste Sketchbook

[darktiste]

Pretty cool! I like the story a lot. it's intriguing.

I feel like you did some good silhouettes, but what about iterations of other elements? You've kind of nailed it down too soon, and spent time making a pretty image with a background before you've really explored it fully.

I really think there's a lot more you can do with this design. pretend this is going to get put into a game as a significant part of the plot. Workshop everything, the material, the shape, the scale of it, scarab motif on it. Research real ancient pieces from Egypt or elsewhere and see if you can push it further based on what has actually been done in that place and time. The design on the front seems kinda like the first thing you came up with. It would be much more interesting if it were less generic. Could the design be sculpted into the metal instead of painted on? If it's an important object i would imagine it would be more intricate. Handles, decoration, maybe even ancient text like a spell embossed into it. 


Just a quick example of the kind of visual research you can do. I found this picture of an ancient vessel. I really like the ring handles, and the stand that it has. It communicates better that it would go over a flame. If you kept the same shape you have and added those two elements that would make it way cooler, and that's just one cursory google search. Ideally, if this was a really important element, you'd crack open a book and find out whatever you can about Egyptian craft, and what kinds of things they might have used for chemistry, or what types of things they would have in tombs. That's the kind of thing that makes a game go from just acceptable to fricken awesome. Attention to detail. It creates a whole world that feels real.



Your fundies need to be strong enough that you can easily explore anything that you want to, to be able to manipulate the form at will, carve into it, add things to it easily. Like could you sculpt the scarab decoration as a relief onto the front of that cauldron? If an art director asked you to do that it would be more than reasonable. That's kind of what I meant before in the previous comment about form. You focus a lot on surface texture, using texture brushes and photoshop effects and stuff. That's kind of icing on the icing. I'd rather see something that lacks finish, but strongly conveys the form of the object and how the light is interacting with it. Get a ref for the material you are trying to replicate.

So to sum up, I think the design could be more referenced, and the form communicated stronger in the render.

I am gonna be trying to push my design and iteration process more and instead of just 1 variant of one idea i want to try to mix and alter proportion as to have atleast 12 option even if it only small change to one of the already existing design those change can alter the way visual hierarchy.

As far as pushing thing and relying on texture that just a personal taste we don't share but i can try to work on that to close the gap in term of the style i can go into as not to be stuck with the digital trickery.

I term of doing research the more the better but i try not to spend to much time on that as it doesn't necessarly benefit my skill growth i certainly get better at picking reference but it doesn't improve my drawing skill .Option are tricky as you want some but not so much that it become a time burden. Most of the time i want to be spending on research is on how the function affect the design. Because this result in more believable and coherent design.

I think the story is a last minute attempt to create a buzz around a half bake design specially the motif i would say .Even if it highly succeed in create the desired buzz the storytelling is like an icing on a cake. The icing it nothing with a design that live to taste as good as i make it sound .With a context people get much more opportunity to share there own interpretation if i did not give it the viewer would take only take the visual for what it is but now since we have a context to compare it against it might fall short to live up to the description.It kind of a double edge sword to reveal the prompt because everyone as there own intepretation of it but at the same time i feel it necessary to reveal to gauge if i was sucessful in living up to the expectation.

I feel both conclusion are valid but i believe i did those point to the best of my ability right now. Most of the challenge in this one was toward you guess it conveying the nature of the cauldron through texture rather than form but if i didn't succeded in the form i would perhaps say it because i am still not to strong in using my light source to help the form read less flat and sometime i don't push the perspective because i got to distracted by my rendering problem instead of working on more perspective heavy drawing.

Thank for the visit and comment.