Crab Character Critique

[Zachary McLean]

Hi, I need help with this character. I was trying to go for a fake Legends of the Cryptids card for my portfolio. Thought it would be fun to do a character that is more rendered and less rough than my usual work.

I think he looks really dumb, and pretty cool at the same time... I do realize he looks like the guy off of Pirates of the Caribbean, but I don't really care. I am not sure if his claw in front of him works, because I just added it in last to try to add some interest near the bottom of the illustration. I also tried to add a sword, but It just wasn't working or I wasn't painting it right.

I think I am liking the colors, light, and the composition is working, I hope.

All feedback is appreciated. I know that it is near a finished stage so I should have asked for a critique earlier probably, but better late than never. Thanks!!

[Patrick Gaumond]

The concept is really neat, and overall I like the design of your character

I think the claw is seriously competing with the rest of the image. By comparison its very very bright and saturated and its drawing a lot of attention to itself, which probably isnt what you want. It doesn't help that its also in front of a very dark spot in your picture. Try playing around with the saturation, brightness and/or contrast of that area a bit

Also, I'm not really sure whether his head is supposed to be infused with the shell or its supposed to be a helmet. Right now its looking a bit tacked on, almost like the face was rendered on its own and then put on top of another picture. I'm leaning more towards the idea that he is part of the crab shell rather than it being a suit of armour. If that's the case you might want to make it seem more believable that the crab bit around his head is merged with his face. Thatll be tricky to do, though, but I think it will pay off.

You've also got this really cool light coming in from both sides, but its not really doing much interesting in my opinion. The bloom effect is nice but I think it would be more striking if you threw in some rim lights around the edges of things, to give you a nice silhouette.

The colours are super rad by the way, and If anything you can always apply the critiques you get here to future works. Hope some of that helped :) If I wasn't clear let me know

[Zachary McLean]

Thank you so much! Took out the claw, added a bit of rim light, and infused the helmet to his head. Let me know if it doesn't look good. I don't know if I added enough rim light, but I didn't want it to steal the show. Does it look Legends of the Cryptids quality? -Haha. By taking out the claw, the composition allows your eye to go to the focus/his head more.-nice.

I am really glad you pointed out that you weren't sure whether he was wearing a helmet or he was infused with the shell. It's changes like that really help make the design more believable.



Keep the critiques coming.

[Patrick Gaumond]

Yea nice! Looks better. I would've went to town with the rim lights but I think it looks good the way you did it subtly around the face. It comes down to preference :)

The face still feels a bit tacked on to me. Take a look at this picture, maybe what I'm saying might make more sense.
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2013...ers-58.jpg

Notice how the little barnacles and stuff growing on him also change the shape of his face, like they're pulling on his skin in some places, and they cast shadows/have occluded shadows and so on. You started doing something similar in your more recent revision around the top left of him, but I think what's really holding that "infused" feeling back is that really stark cast shadow on his face. Its pushing the face back and the helmet forward and making it look more like a helmet and less like a part of him. You might want to throw in some fill light there to reduce that distance a bit, but make sure to keep an occluded shadow.

As far as quality goes for the most part I can see this in an applibot work. The rendering around the torso and the arms is nice and convincing, but its really the face that doesn't work for me.

Hope that helps

[Zachary McLean]

Hi,

Thanks and sorry about the delay -been on vacation. I made a few pretty drastic changes, but just to make him look less like an old man and more of a scary skeleton warped crab man of some sort.. Haha. Hopefully it looks better. I think it does. Sorry, that it's pretty low quality.
I saved over the Jpg file way too many times.. grr.

Next time I'm definitely going to do a better pose and perspective.