Seeking crits about comp and ideas for colors

[Lloyken]

Hi everyone !

I have worked for 5 days on the illustration below and I thought it would be a good idea to have a fresh eye on that.

This is an illustration I'm doing for a friend who's getting married. I've known him for while, back in the days we were both roleplayers. I've got the idea to turn him into one of the character he used to play, a monk fighter named Fenryl. I first designed the monk, his position and gear, added the face of my friend on the body i have painted.

At first, I just set the monk fighting two orcs and as the painting went on, I enlarged it and really made him fight an army (his character was powerfull enough).

Composition-wise, I decided early to work with the diagonal made by the position of the monk, painting two orcs on the right below him. As I enlarged the canvas, I sticked with that idea, leaning the ground and the army around him to be parallel with his left arm. When the character of the necromancer came out on the foreground, I made him point at the monk to have a nice triangle in the frame. To add a little depht to the image, I came out with the Beholder and his beams which make the viewer go back and forth from the necromancer to the monk to the beholder.

And now, I'm quite stocked.

Working on this for 5 days, I can't see what's working and whats not. I will take a break for a day or two but I thought I could use a fresh eye.

So, after this long introduction, here's my question :

What could I improve ? What's working and what's not ?

Although, I have absolutely no idea for the colors I will be using so if you want to throw some ideas, you're very much welcome !!

Thanks for reading this !

[attachment=32256]

[Psychotime]

First, you did not need to upload that at actual size. It'll eventually shrink to fit the forum, but my computer still has to load that thing up.

Cut it down to 25% of actual size. Please no more than that.

Moving on, there's too much negative space. I think you should think about moving the character to the left and cutting out a huge chunk of the right.

Or you can just add more monsters for the character to be up against to show off how badass he is.

What is the deal with the skeletons, by the way?

I can barely see the army he's up against. You could make the bad guys in the background much more pronounced, maybe closer to the camera, and add more villains in the foreground to give a sense of the character being truly surrounded.

If the beholder really matters, I think it should be closer. And make sure those eye beams look like beams.

[Lloyken]

Sorry for the size of the image...

I should have precised that the image is not done yet so yeah the beholder, the army behind the monk and the skeletons in the foreground are not finished.

I will try to move the monk to reduce the negative space though, thanks.

[Kaffer]

I agree with Psycho, plus IMO the background should contain elements which add to the story - why is he there, who is he fighting, etc. I personally don't really understand the function of the one-eyed dood on the back, and you might check the foreshortening on the front zombie guy. Maybe try to move the monk little lower than the top edge of the image as well..

[Lloyken]

Thanks guys !

I'll repost another version as soon as I can !

[Amit Dutta]

Paintover time... The long airtime leap seemed to suggest a portrait comp would be better. Tried to bolster up the beholder in the bg though I have no idea how big these guys are supposed to be according to the lore so I made him bloody humongous. I also added more doods wanting to be generally disagreeable to our hero in view. I think the pose in yours doesn't really make a whole lot of sense so I tried to add a bit of action to indicate he's ready to hulk smash and also made the expression more "grrrr" "no you di'nt girlfriend".
I think a cool sky and warm fire and smoky battle could work for a colour scheme. Hope it helps. Oh also awesome rendering on the body, it almost looks like a photo but it goes to show you have to nail the fundamentals of the image in its entirety every time before you render! Doing things piecemeal rarely ends up with good results and can cause massive headaches.

[Lloyken]

Thank you so much monkeybread for doing this ! I really built this piece backward cause first I was trying to make a cool character based on the D&D character sheet of my friend and add his face on it. I had so much fun with it, I began to fully render it before thinking of the composition. I tried then to have it work with the character but it's obvious I failed... Thanks for your tips, I will start again !

[Amit Dutta]

No worries, I really hope it was useful.Kudos to you for making the hard decision mate. You can still use most of the rendered pose and the spitting zombie, the rest is just fun and games. XD