darth Maul & Talon

[Devil Glonk]

This piece was just a bit of fun for myself but is now driving me mad!
My main problem is getting depth between the 2 characters. As they are the same race its pretty difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
I've tried desaturating Talon which kind of works but then the background looks more vivid than her!
**uploaded image is without said desaturation.



Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers

[SamC]

Hi man, nice piece. I can see you're really trying to think about light and volume. I think the main reason she looks so close is that you're having a bit of a problem thinking about edges and how they give contrast. Really every edge that you want to pop out should have a dark-light contrast. The reason they look like one shape is because that edge contrast just isn't there. I can see you trying it with things like the back of her head, and making Maul a little lighter than the dark background.

This is actually the perfect image to tackle edges with, as it should go from being: character is darker than the bright background, to: character is lighter than the dark background. I've seen this light to dark kinda image set up before, and you really have to blow out the saturation and brightness of the light side, and darken and soften up the dark side in order to make things standout.

I made it so the bright light coming from behind Maul effected Talon's butt and legs more, whilst Maul was darker against the light around his dress, once again making an edge transition. And then again on this arm, I made it effected by the light from the background whilst in the back she is darker, to once again create a strong value transition. Again, brightening the purple light effecting the right side of Maul, darkening the background, makes an edge. I think you get the idea. If you wanted to push Talon back further you could take a lighten layer with a brighter orange colour and play with making her shadows fit more into the background.

Other quick things, watch out for not making all of the dark pattern things on them too dark, light still effects 'black' areas. And also I suppose the light from the lightsabers should be having an effect on things around them.

Hope this helped, keep it up, looks cool!

[Devil Glonk]

Thank you so much! That looks great now and is really really helpful.
I'll certainly do as you have suggested.
Thanks again. :)