Mountain fight

[sasemax]

Hi guys and girls. I'm not done rendering this one (though I kinda like the roughness it has at this stage). What do you think? I think the lighting is working fairly well. But my GF thought the dead guy was a rock, haha. So maybe I need to redo him. Any feedback? Oh, and does anyone have any tips on painting realistic clouds?

[Broadway]

Hey man, very cool! Definitely got the Conan vibe going on here. I have a few suggestions and a quick paintover.


 - The placement of the fire seems like it would currently be behind him, so he would mostly just be rim lit by the fire, instead of front/side lit.
 - The moon light might be more from the front; but I didn't mess with it too much and kept it mostly as a weak side light. The direction of it wasn't distracting and seemed to work.
 - Also with the fire, I think placing it on the edge of the frame distracts from the main character a bit. I just removed it entirely and used the smoke to signify that it was there, providing the side light source. I think you could also get away with having the fire right behind the main guy so that he overlaps it some; that way it wouldn't pull the focus away from him. In any case, I think you would want more smoke from the fire in general since it is big enough to provide such a strong light source.
 - Similarly with the cliff, I think it will work a bit better if the light portion of the cliff is just the part near the character.
 - The sky clouds in the back looked a bit sharp and their brightness was pulling away from the main character a bit. I just decontrasted/softened them up a bit.
 - minor change: I felt that the sword seemed too small in relation to the main guy, so I beefed it up a bit.
 - Finally shifted everything toward red just a bit as our main light source is fire.

Paintover is definitely not perfect but I hope it can give you some ideas. Keep up the good work man!

[meat]

You almost have an "=" sign composition from the man in the air, and the top edge of the rock, and then a straight up line connecting the "=" sign from the warrior, which makes the whole image very static and stable, like a bridge. If you want a more dramatic feel, I suggest looking into changing the composition to have bigger diagonal lines.

To make the dead man even more obvious as a man and not a rock, have you though of adding some human-related details like the fingers somewhere, or horns on his helmet?

As for realistic cloud when you're not used to painting clouds, you're just going to have to use a lot of references.

[sasemax]

Thanks for some great feedback both of you! Very cool and useful paintover. Here's a new version where I've tried to include some of your feedback. I've left the composition as it is, because it would be a large thing to change it now, but I'll remmeber your feedback for future paintings.

'Changelog':
*Removed fire, added fiery smoke instead
*Boosted the reds of the image
*Boosted lighting on hero's face
*Made sword larger, added blood
*Dimmed the clouds and general background
*Dimmed light on the cliff in the foregound
*Added arm on dead guy
*Other minor changes