General Detailing Enviro Help..?

[Jordan Grimmer]

I'm determined to keep detailing this bastard until my eyes fall out, I never spend enough time on pieces and I really want to make this one work. Would like a few other opinions though, what do you guys think? What other objects/details could i add to make this more interesting? Also trying to add more storytelling elements in too but not too sure how... argh.

[mindwrack]

hey, you have some cool stuff going on here, especially the lighting, but i don't think detailing is the problem, in fact i think going too heavily on detail would damage the piece. i have a couple of things to say which i think would help make the piece more interesting.

first of all your focal point looks like a gate/entrance of some sort, especially with the towers behind it, so it would make more sense to continue the the sides into some sort of wall rather than a few randomly placed towers beside it.

secondly, you have some really nice lighting going on which really helps define the focal point but in terms of storytelling your figures are sort of just standing there looking very static. i was at the conceptart.org workshop in london over the weekend and kekai gave me some great advice which i think could be applied to this piece too. you need to have your figures interacting with your main focal point, bring the elements within the piece together and don't just have them standing there. bring them further into the foreground making them bigger and overlapping the gate with some sort of movement to them, this could create a really cool silhouette against the light and help make the piece more dynamic. another quick point is that those towers in the background don't appear to be in the same architectural style as the ones in the foreground, they are a big blocky, as though they are from something sci-fi or something :P

finally in terms of detail and refinement, remember that it's probably not best to detail everywhere in the piece, you want to create a hierarchy throughout the main and secondary focal points, refine everything to an extent, but if you detail the parts where the viewer won't be looking it will just become distracting.

hope this helps a bit, it's looking good though so keep pushing :D

[Jordan Grimmer]

Thanks for the great feedback man! Really helpful and I've taken a few of your pointers on board. I'm not great at figures so they still need some refining but it's moving on a bit more. Might do a tad more to it, most to the wall and stuff. Not sure to completely get rid of that darker, far back small pillar completely and block it off.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey Jordan you have a nice base and some good skills, and your values are spot on. I did a quick paintover just to give you some ideas to think about.



I agree with Mindwrack. Narrative is about character and anything you can do with that can help be it with scale and/or movement and additional "life" details.

I adjusted your comp a bit to make sure the first and second focal points followed rule of thirds. (mostly cuz I'm lazy and I know that works) Added some separation between elements with atmo. fog to accentuate depth. Mostly just masked off and airbrushed in.

Created stronger foreground elements and a couple of characters to up the narrative. Added some details like flame around the place to add some life. The clouds are ambigous atm, they could be smoke from fire or just firey clouds. I suggested that a lot of flame around the place may be a contributing factor.
Oh also tweaked the perspective to be a bit more dramatic and made it more a 3 point perspective with the perspective warp tool (quick and dirty cheat)
hope that helps.