Critiques Please

[zaidali]

Hi,

Would love to get some serious critiques on this piece I did for the Brainstorm Challenge group. The goal was to redsign Darth Vader and this one was inspired by Middle Eastern culture.

Best Regards!

[Patrick Gaumond]

I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not such a great designer myself, so don't regard this as gospel! However I think my perspective is still worthwhile

Brainstorm is primarily about designing, so let's start with that. From what I see what you've done mostly is put some some robes on top of the characters, open the eye slits and given vader a curved sword. That's the "big" design read I get. It gets the middle eastern message across but I think there's a lot more you can do, and I think you can dive into the minutiae more. The middle east has a ridiculously rich background in clothing design, pattern, jewelery, architecture, etc and what you've done is mostly take the kind of cliches that everyone knows offhand and put them ontop of iconic characters. If you're going to transport them into another era, really transport them, you know? Maybe it was a time constraint issue but I think you could have researched a specific era in history (the byzantines for instance) or at least the region in a little more depth to have a bigger visual library to work from. It's not strictly middle eastern, but "Byzantine fashion paper dolls" by tom tierney is a historically accurate book that shows examples of what they used to wear. If that's not martial enough google, wikipedia, pinterest or any other site are good starting points

I think you could experiment with beads, ropes, chains, or jewelry of some sort in different areas, maybe some things draped off his helmet, surrounding his waist or as a sort of shawl. Keep in mind this is a redesign, you don't have to stay so close to the original. The most iconic parts about him are the helmet, his stature and his huge cape. If you keep those intact or recognizable you can go to town with the details from pretty much any era.


About the technical fundamentals, the poses are nicely done, anatomy is stylized but still mostly solid, I think the hands are a little bit small and vader looks kind of wimpy compared to the original design (keep in mind he was played by a 7 foot tall body builder!). So on that front I think you're ok. I think the black fabric of his shirt and pants, and the red fabric surrounding his waist are very well indicated, but the red cape, especially around the floor, really doesn't meet that same standard in my opinion. The best resource on wrinkles is burne hogarthes "dynamic wrinkles and drapery". It pretty much covers every kind of wrinkle possible, and i think the red cape in particular could benefit from that knowledge. It's easily found as a pdf online or you can buy it in store or on amazon. It's a good investment, trust me.

If that small black skirt is blowing in the wind then the big red cape should be too in some way. To me it looks like they are trying to occupy the same space in perspective and it's not really working. Maybe that's nitpicky but i think it's worth pointing out.

Lastly I don't think you need to fog out the guys in the back so much. Vader is imposing enough and he occupies the highest point on the page, that we will focus on him regardless

Hope that helps, let me know if anything wasn't clear or if you have questions or anything

[zaidali]

Wow mann thanks for the critique. Everything you said made sense and I was looking for something as in depth as your comment, so thanks once again.

1)The design could be a lot more researched and pushed
2)Wrinkles (red cape) could be executed with some more love
3)Red cape should be blowing with the wind
4)Clones should be a little more prominent

I actually wanted this Dath Vader to be whimpy and a pack of bones!

Lettme know if I missed something

I am super glad I found this site!

[Patrick Gaumond]

Cool man! Glad it helped. That pretty much sums up what I said :)
And if that was your intention thats fine, just make sure he's absolutely recognizable as vader and not a skinny sith guy (I think he looks vader, but if you decide to adjust this later keep it in mind is all)