Jones Sketchbook

[ImSkeptical]

Hey bro, your stuffs looking way better from when I last checked your sketchbook. Those ember design studio characters are pretty dope.

I feel like overall though, you should experiment a little more with how you use contrast and texture. Right now I feel like its way too high and its hurting the light vs dark. I did a paintover to try demonstrate.



Basically I just lassoed the light area and pressed ctrl q. Then I dragged down the bar that said contrast. Whats happening is it reduces that huge value range that you've got going when you apply your textures, and shrinks the range so it doesn't span so many values. This lets it have the effect that you want of the textures, which is that complexity and interesting ways to break up edges, but doesn't have that heavy handed feel.

The last picture i just simplified your shadows to enhance this even more. Its exactly the same thing, I just reduced the noise, so there wasn't any little specs of bright values. I feel like you tend to be a little messy in your shadows, but taking a few seconds to clean it up, or using a softer brush for shadows, would make a big difference. The edges and core shadow its fine to use those textures, but once you get in there try simplify it.

Doing these 2 things you get a big contrast between light and dark, light has all this nice texture and complexity, one is smoother and simpler, one is light values, one is dark values. Its quite subtle, but it does make a difference. I did it again here



I just wanna show its not about something being too bright or too dark, its about the contrast and value range you use, and making sure things that are different are different in contrast as well.

Hopefully what I said made sense and you experiment around with it. Keep working hard man :D.