My first portfolio creation

[Trevor S.]

Igor, nice work my man! You're getting very good! Keep up the good work!

[IgorIv]

After failing on a painting I realized that I need to get back the ambition of getting better that I some how unknowingly lost... I hope I achieved that at least a bit... One more portfolio piece for my card game portfolio... Plz help me with your feedback to achieve my goal of getting card game jobs such as Applibot, Wizards of the Coast, etc... Sorry if I am repeating myself but you just don't know how much I want this...

[darktiste]

Main objective:One character that catch the eye(Pose and facial expression and where the eye of the character is looking at )

Secondary objective:add something to add personality and originality to the character(object,light source,familliar,aura,)

Third objective:background enchancing the character

so for me the problem is that you focus to much on the storytelling part but that only a opinion
you should focus more on the charism of the character face expression and pose and composition

DON'T FORGET EACH CARD REPRESENT A ELEMENT OF THE GAME CREATURE,OBJECT,EFFECT,OBJECTIVE,TERRAIN SO YOU NEED TO BE CLEAR ON THAT PRESENTATION

Here some example of magic the gathering look at how simple they are.

[IgorIv]

Thx Darktiste! I wanted to master storytelling first since it is much harder than just showing the character but, yea, you are right... It is a portfolio for card games so now I will focus more on presenting a character... Thx again!

[IgorIv]

Here is a new painting... Tried to apply all the advice you guys gave me...

[JonHop]

This last image is really well polished and thought out with a great composition and sense of scale and perspective, one thing is bugging me though, the left side piece of hair (her left our right) that is on the collar bone and covering part of the neck and shoulder it's giving a bit of a weird read like the neck and the shoulder are merging into one because its covering them. Just my thoughts on this image, and I might add you have a great body of work building here, keep it up!

[bluecs9]

What the heck ? THIS Is so awesome!! I can't believe how much talent can you have :D. I saw the orc drawing. First I was like that's so epic..there is no mistake in that drawing until Simonarpalmer showed you the mistakes. :-o your art is so amazing. What do you use to draw them? Is it a painting/ coloring pencils ? and what did you use to make it ? :D

[Simonarpalmer]

You really stepped it up on this most recent painting Igor, congratulations :-) There are some minor perspective and anotomy artifacts, but overall a big step forward in my eyes.

[Typhon]

So... we are getting Cryptcrawler successor :D Awesome works, very motivating :))

[IgorIv]

Wow! Thank you guys... Really didn't expect this! THX!

[bluecs9]

What the heck ? THIS Is so awesome!! I can't believe how much talent can you have :D. I saw the orc drawing. First I was like that's so epic..there is no mistake in that drawing until Simonarpalmer showed you the mistakes. :-o your art is so amazing. What do you use to draw them? Is it a painting/ coloring pencils ? and what did you use to make it ? :D

[IgorIv]

Sorry bluecs9... Forgot to answer... I use photoshop and a tablet wacom 5... I imagine what I want to paint then start painting, looking at reference and fixing stuff over and over until I am 90% satisfied (because I am never 100% satisfied)... That is pretty much it...

[IgorIv]

Here is an upgraded version of the pirate girl... It is hard to explain, but, in this painting, The first time ever I was thinking of colors and values... Before I was more focusing on the materials and I taught that was what made an image realistic and cinematic. This time I was really fighting the habit of painting everything from complete black to complete white, in terms of values. Also I realized that local colors drastically change and have little effect on the final colors...blablabla.... Hope you like it!
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[Fedodika]

that last piece is really good, you've come a hell of along way! i can tell how influenced by brad rigney since the composition is almost identical to his queen guivenere advanced piece; i'm not that close to your level but i will suggest that you just take lots of time thumbnailing and pre planning, which you're probably doing already. It's great to see your progress so pleaze keep us updated ;)

[nim]

keep up the amazing work! looking forward to see more polished goodness

[darktiste]

I think that the next objective you should be focus on is the skin if you look carefuly at the skin it full of really thin wrinkle so try to find a brush that mimic that kind of style

[IgorIv]

Thanks Guys! Words can not describe how much I appreciate all the comments and support!

Here are 2 more paintings for my Applibot portfolio... I need 2 more and then I am sending it so wish me luck.





Hope you like them!

[Johanaan]

Hey dude. This is quite an improvement. You're getting the light like a pro and your detail level is amazing ;)

For the constructive criticism I recommend doing some more anatomy life studies. After doing these you will instantly get much better. By observation you'll start to see diferent details that make things more realistic. By this I don't mean the details you already mastered but the little abstract things like IRREGULARITIES. Life is full of it.

So when your doing art try imagine how it would look like in the real life. For example: the dragon on the first painting is very detailed but it also has hair like it just came from the barber shop. It looks all combed out and all the hair is going in the same direction. It would look more fierce, convincing and even with more character if you messed up his hair. He's probably fighting all the time and doesn't care about his good looks.

One other example would be the plates on the guys armor. They all look paralel. I understand it's designed like that but they don't need to be like this. There's a difference between those plates on stomach which are fixed and can stay paralel but those plates on the legs are probably attached diferently and don't need to be so rigid, so you can slightly turn each plate to a different angle. It will totally ad to the dinamic of the piece because the skeleton guy looks very dinamic but the armor on him looks like its peacefully resting on him like in the museum.

I didn't want to scribble on your painting cuz I don't have the time at the moment but you can check out my latest sketch in the sketchbook and you'll see what I mean by irregularities.

http://crimsondaggers.com/forum/thread-3...l#pid50725

I'm working on a piece right now dealing with the same problems as you and it's still WIP but you can clearly see on the top left how the staff looks weird. That's because I just started designing it and it doesn't look 3dimensional. But because I'm looking it from the front all the spikes look paralel and boring. But the minute I'll turn it around and put it in the right perspective some of the spikes will become smaller some bigger and in different angles like on the arm guards. It will instantly look more interesting.

So anyways I hope this helps. Keep up the good work. Cheers.

[IgorIv]

Thank you Johanaan! I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a long comment! You are completely right... I need a lot more randomness in the design and the rendering... It is really hard for me to not try to make everything so perfect... I don't know... It's a big issue and I am struggling to fix... I just keep rendering stuff to death and if something is not 100% clean and perfect it bugs me... That makes my stuff look kinda stiff... I am experimenting with different workflows but I always end up over rendering because I don't have the experience to get stuff to look realistic and right even when it's loose... Plus I need to think of the randomness in the design part and take all the physics in account... It is so hard to keep the concentration to improve at multiple things at once...

[Johanaan]

Hey IgorIv, no problem dude if it's any help I'm glad to do it ;) Well if you render the stuff in such details you obviously have the drive and the passion for painting which is always an amazing thing. That also means you won't have any problems sitting for hours and painting but also that you'll improve if you put your mind to it. It's good to experiment. Everyone needs to find his/her own method that suits him/her.

I don't know how many hours you spent on these painting but maybe you can devote just one hour of the time spent on doing studies of the poses right at the beginning. Perhaps even spend some time on doing several compositions and then when you have like 10 or 20 of them chose one and finish it.

I totally understand how you can get pulled into doing the details right away especially because you do them very well but maybe if you set yourself a rule not to do it until you're totally satisfied with the composition and the pose maybe it will help.

Also you need to learn how to sacrifice your little darlings (the details) in favor of the whole piece. Often you get in the situation when you start detailing and you start to like what you did. The more time you invest in a detail the harder will be to let it go and destroy it if it's not correct. Because if it's not helping the whole piece then you don't need it. I used to have the same problem, but I found a method that works for me.

First rule is don't zoom in. Try to finish your piece without zooming in. When you're done zoom in and do the details but also check once in a while how it looks without the zoom. I use the navigator for that.

If you're already in the situation that you spent too much time on a detail that's not helping the piece and you're afraid to erase it ... well you can just make a copy of it on another layer so you have in your mind that all of the time spent on it was not a waste hide this layer and draw again but this time without the zoom. After a while you'll get used to not attaching yourself too much to the details and you'll be able to progress because you'll be painting as a whole.

Carry on :)