Critiques appreciated

[pabnav]

Very cool pieces! Love the style. I think your rendering and shape design are solid so I can try to give some design critique, but it will be very subjective so take it with a grain of salt :). 

Demon chick - 
I like her dress, belt, and gauntlets. I wish the boots were either more like the gauntlets, or more distinct. Right now they are *almost* the same style which seems a bit weird. 

Agree totally about the arms, it's hard to tell she has extra arms and she basically just has standard human anatomy with extra arms stuck on. I think her skeleton would need to change more drastically to accommodate the extra limbs.

I'm also not sure if some of her arms have gauntlets, and others just have armored chitin that is part of her body, or what. If it is a mix of both on the different arms, maybe make the armor and chitin look less similar.

Likewise it looks like she's wearing boots but then the skin of her feet looks just like the boots/leg armor so you can't really tell clearly which is which.

The feet are cool but they don't feel right on a standard human walking-on-heels skeleton. If she is gonna have bird/reptile feet you might consider doing more bird-type legs with the raised heel.

I'd like to see her spotty skin pattern a bit more on her face (maybe?) the face looks almost like normal skin whereas the rest of the body is clearly non-human skin.


Engineer guy - 

Costume looks cool but since he appears to be a utilitarian mechanic type dude, it seems a bit impractical. The expanded collar I could see being useful if it needs to attach to a hazmat hood or something, but then you would want the gray "cover" to extend over his whole body, and it has holes in it on his sides so that wouldn't work.

The holes in general (where you can see the yellow through the gray fabric under his arms) seem pretty impractical. I'm just imagining them getting caught on machinery and having parts fall into them and such. Maybe you could get the same shapes in there but stitch up the holes (stitch the gray fabric to the yellow along the hole edges).

The thing on his chest, again looks cool but it's not clear what it is for. Maybe if it had some lights/controls it could be a life support unit, or if it had a little radio handset it could be a comm link, or something.

The gloves don't look very work-glove/industrial -ish. They look more like just normal "fancy" gloves. Maybe make them a bit more heavy duty?

Kneepads again, cool shape but they seem a bit flimsy for a clunky mechanic guy. I think because the straps are small. Also most kneepads have either a sleeve or 2 straps since 1 doesn't hold them in place that well.

Boots don't seem like what this type of dude would have. Again, the openings on top seem inconvenient and like stuff would fall into them. Something shaped a bit more like a workboot or even combat boot could work. Maybe more like a snowboard boot if you want it to look space-y.

Wrench, again cool shape but it seems too "weak" for this dude. If you are gonna need a 5 foot wrench to turn something, that thing is gonna be huge and hard to turn. I'd make it thicker or turn it into some other kind of tool that would make sense to have a thinner handle.

I like the satchel and cargo pockets. Maybe give him some kind of tool belt as well?




That's it! This sort of thing is very subjective but hopefully my rambling can give you some ideas. Again I think these work very nicely from an illustration standpoint and I'm just talking more about "what to paint" rather than "how to paint" as you seem to have that part covered. Great work man!

Thank you, awesome advice! I have to admit, for a long time I focused more in the technical stuff than the design, and I find myself a bit clumsy when doing concepts. 

I agree with most of your ideas. Some of the things you point are clearly wrong designed, thing is, I get caught up in the drawing and don't see this flaws until someone tells me (thanks again!). For example, with the engineer guy I barely put thought on it, I just wanted to draw cool stuff (bad idea for concept art). 
With the girl, I did put some time to make the character's story, but yet, some of the design solutions are confusing or, at least, could be more spectacular. Things like the armored gauntlet and quitin being too similar, are like that on purpose, like she used her own "discarded scales" (not sure how to call it, excuse my english) to craft some armor here and there. Obviously I did not communicated that idea, maybe I should have weathered the armor a little more, given it different texture and specularity, or something like that. With the anatomy I agree completely. Next time I'll put some more thought to the extra pair of shoulders and feet.

Again, thank you so much, this kind of comments help me a lot, and motivate me to improve!