need some in depth crit on this

[Raymond_Minnaar]

final_stand_by_raymondminnaar-d5fsfxp by Raymond Minnaar, on Flickr

Hi hi Just want to get some good opinion about this and maybe a good crit

thanx in advance

[AndreM]

Hi hi

Cant tell whats going on in the background, I see a dragon with one wing and a donut shaped mountain spewing light - Which I guess is a compositional aid, but its not really working, because mountains don't spew light. Story telling wise, how is this a final stand? It looks like a worn down warrior giving up (thus throwing his arms out wide like that, exposing his chest).

The picture doesnt really provide any visual cues as to what is going on except the evil lady is about to shoot a crossbow, is she even aiming at our hero? - She looks a bit indifferent. Is he even our hero? Why is his clothes so tattered when his plate armor and weapon doesnt have a scratch, and who has he been fighting? Maybe he is responsible for the one winged dragon.
His weapon seems awesomel, is there a story to it as well?

Who is the indifferent yet evil lady with the blue eyes and will there be a sequel?

Using the lighting situation to pinpoint focal points or suggest composition is a great strategy, but your mountain light source doesnt make sense, maybe if lava was flowing out of it... But this light points at the front of our character which we cannot see, why? Is the only purpose of this light to guide our eyes towards the relationship between his chest and the crossbow?
Before you redo lighting, think hard about what story you are telling.

npz

edit: typos and unicorns removed.

[Mr. Toodles]

I would say there's to much focus on minor details in the design of the armor, and not enough work on the forms of the figures. What I mean by this is that certain parts of your lighting doesn't really add to the illusion of three dimensional form. areas like the girls chin seem to almost run from the back of her ear all the way to the other side of her head without a change in how the light hits her face

try working on foreshortening as well the direction of the girls arm with the bow seems like its not exactly facing the viewer and instead off to the side

[Raymond_Minnaar]

I would say there's to much focus on minor details in the design of the armor, and not enough work on the forms of the figures. What I mean by this is that certain parts of your lighting doesn't really add to the illusion of three dimensional form. areas like the girls chin seem to almost run from the back of her ear all the way to the other side of her head without a change in how the light hits her face

try working on foreshortening as well the direction of the girls arm with the bow seems like its not exactly facing the viewer and instead off to the side

thank you well ill have to look into the pic and a few other things

---

Hi hi

Cant tell whats going on in the background, I see a dragon with one wing and a donut shaped mountain spewing light - Which I guess is a compositional aid, but its not really working, because mountains don't spew light. Story telling wise, how is this a final stand? It looks like a worn down warrior giving up (thus throwing his arms out wide like that, exposing his chest).

The picture doesnt really provide any visual cues as to what is going on except the evil lady is about to shoot a crossbow, is she even aiming at our hero? - She looks a bit indifferent. Is he even our hero? Why is his clothes so tattered when his plate armor and weapon doesnt have a scratch, and who has he been fighting? Maybe he is responsible for the one winged dragon.
His weapon seems awesomel, is there a story to it as well?

Who is the indifferent yet evil lady with the blue eyes and will there be a sequel?

Using the lighting situation to pinpoint focal points or suggest composition is a great strategy, but your mountain light source doesnt make sense, maybe if lava was flowing out of it... But this light points at the front of our character which we cannot see, why? Is the only purpose of this light to guide our eyes towards the relationship between his chest and the crossbow?
Before you redo lighting, think hard about what story you are telling.

npz

edit: typos and unicorns removed.

yo man thanx but seriosly you need to scale down a bit.

---

Hi hi

Cant tell whats going on in the background, I see a dragon with one wing and a donut shaped mountain spewing light - Which I guess is a compositional aid, but its not really working, because mountains don't spew light. Story telling wise, how is this a final stand? It looks like a worn down warrior giving up (thus throwing his arms out wide like that, exposing his chest).

The picture doesnt really provide any visual cues as to what is going on except the evil lady is about to shoot a crossbow, is she even aiming at our hero? - She looks a bit indifferent. Is he even our hero? Why is his clothes so tattered when his plate armor and weapon doesnt have a scratch, and who has he been fighting? Maybe he is responsible for the one winged dragon.
His weapon seems awesomel, is there a story to it as well?

Who is the indifferent yet evil lady with the blue eyes and will there be a sequel?

Using the lighting situation to pinpoint focal points or suggest composition is a great strategy, but your mountain light source doesnt make sense, maybe if lava was flowing out of it... But this light points at the front of our character which we cannot see, why? Is the only purpose of this light to guide our eyes towards the relationship between his chest and the crossbow?
Before you redo lighting, think hard about what story you are telling.

npz

edit: typos and unicorns removed.

yo man thanx but seriosly you need to scale down a bit.

[AndreM]

Sorry Raymond, taking it down a notch - I was a bit excited when I wrote that post..

Taking another look at the picture, the environment feels like a battlefield, but there are no real traces of any battles except the one that is about to happen.

Cant wait to see the finished version, hope you will post it.

[NickHuddleston]

Hey the composition is good, But I have a few tips for you to try to make it stand out, and I'll try to be as straight foward as I can lol :), I think the coloring needs some arrangement, I feel the greyish blue you got going on makes it seem a lil bit dull, and I'm really feeling if you had a sepia type tone over it, it would really pop even more, thank 300, I feel the forground charaecter needs to be on his knee or both, and sword proped in the ground, your lead character has a crossbow, perhaps if you had a few arrows already in the foreground character, and perhaps have his armor damaged, if it's his final stand, then I feel his armor needs to show it, you can accomplish this bu increasing specularity on his armor, like give the indication that it has dents and it's been through hell. Feel like perhaps, need to roughen up the femal character too, to make it look like at first she might have got her ass handed to her, this will create a more emotional impact on the piece for the viewer, if they see it, they'll invision an epic battle that just went down, and it was badass, and loosen up folds in the foreground characters cape, to give it a more free flowing and destraught look. I think with these changes it'll really stand out, hope this helped :)

[Raymond_Minnaar]

yo Andre, no prob. i did a work on the piece a bit more, mainly tried to fix the angle of the crossbow, i hope it looks a bit better (fixing that is very tricky). Then I added more scratches and dents to the armor, I Changes some anatomy issues on the girl, the color of the artwork looks a lil better i think, the dragon has two wings now, it was there just wasn't very visible on a lower res picture.

and then i added some dirt here and there
i think i need to change the name too,, was in a bad mood and wasn't thinking about it

I made the changes a while back, way before nick's comments, I agree with him but i don't want to get stuck on one piece

here is the now version
final_stand_by_raymondminnaar-d5fsfxp by Raymond Minnaar, on Flickr