CGMythology's Sketchbook

[JyonnyNovice]

great sketch and awesome that you can stick with this myth theme to keep developing new pieces for.

The characters look great. Iconic and familiar story but with some nice unanswered questions : )

I think maybe you could push the depth more in the rest of the scene, especially with the foreground. The boat feels quite long, going off the character size differences but the foreground rocky part with the candles there is not much size variation (also comparing the candles on shore with the candles on the boat). Unless that rocky part is actually a slope and not flat ground - it feels like flat ground to me right now. The background mountains also feel really close, feels like she could use some breathing room around her (but then you can do that with colours and values so maybe not important!).

There's some tangent with the birds, I'm sure you'd notice and fix those anyway but right now the path from the woman through the birds sticks out and feels odd - probably because of the tangents. Lastly, maybe a little too detail heavy on the left side of the image? with the FG birds, woman, the boat details behind her and the birds in the sky it feels just a little unbalanced - maybe a load more hands in the water on the right?

Maybe it could work with a bigger canvas? some more water and rocks and the characters/boat smaller?

Just my gut reactions anyway! Possibly some stuff in there that's not so important since I only looked at it for a few minutes. Hope it's useful anyway! Love the concept and looking forward to seeing it come together!

[darktiste]

This one probably going to be my favorite piece of you so far.I would say try go even more creative replace the bird with spirit flying around i think you could get a few reference from harry potter on those.What i like about this piece is how you have created depth with the foreshorting boat will be interesting to see how you develop the mood you could try to do a few mood interation with different color see what you like before committing.

[cgmythology]

JyonnyNovice: Thank you!  I agree about the depth/foreground, just made some changes with that in mind.  I also did some changes to fix the business of the bottom left, gave it a bit more breathing space so I hope that helped compositionally!  Very useful input from you as always, so I'm grateful you gave me time to offer your feedback!

darktiste:  That means a lot, thank you!  I've begun the painting process as well, went with a warm color theme.  Initially I wanted to use more reddish tones but that would limit my values a bit, but I'll try to play the reddish tones up a bit as it progresses.

.............

I updated the sketch based on the input I received and began the painting process.  Still very early but it should give you an idea of where it's heading.  Pretty satisfied with the color palette so far.  For the woman's dress I wasn't sure whether to go with white or a colored version, but ultimately I felt white was too cliché so I chose a contrasting color of blue instead.  I hope this was the right choice!  Any input appreciated as always!

[cgmythology]

I continued the painting process, it's come quite a long way I think!  Did some changes to the composition and 'flipped' the mountains in the back as I feel it worked better this way.  Pretty happy with how it's coming along so far.  Any input appreciated as always!

[JyonnyNovice]

looking great, mountains definitely working better this way around. Couple things I notice, possibly you can ignore them, maybe you just didn't get to them yet; bg mountains very uniform in shape and spacing, same with the hands. The flap of white cloth at the front of the boat drapes in an odd feeling way. The draping of her dress feels unconvincing right now, probably hard to find good reference for such a specific angle and pose but Noah Bradley's reference packs on gumroad have one with a lot of photos of those billowing kind of dresses.

but yea, looking awesome : )

[xelfereht]

Had a mess around to see how It could proceed.
a few notes I have..

the perspective of the boat feels like its under the influence of a different lens, the foreshortening doesnt feel consistent.
I think it helped to bring the birds and rocks a bit closer to compensate and make the piece a bit more interactive with the visual elements.
hands in the water were a bit uniform in posture and distribution making them feel a bit stiff and not too threatening when there isnt a clear look that theyre interested in the boat so i turned a couple of the hands facing away form the boat.
the sun or sky light source seems to be coming from behind them but the whole scene is quite flatly lit.
you can make use of the foreground darkness caused by the light source coming from behind them. you can use it to make use of the candle light which is rather a weak light source so having them subtly lighting up the side of the boat works better if that part of the boat isnt receiving sky light.
not having his skull face so lit can also allow you to make the eye glow more apparent. i didnt up the glow of his eyes but by comparison the glow makes a bit more sense with the darker tones surrounding.

use lights and darks to your advantage, you can really craft parts of the scene to play well with your control over the lighting decisions.
the mountains bit samey and thus bit boring. could add some variety in there for interests sake, make the piece feel that much more rich for quite little effort.
birds felt a bit forced and confined into a tight shape, also a bit too prominent in value
the scythe rowing stick looks a bit under intimidating so could play with that.
the girl, she looks pretty casual and chill riding into hell.
maybe theres room to adjust the pose to something more thought provoking story wise.
and that blue, super pure for such a warm orange dominated lighting scheme.
I gave everything a warm orange photo filter adjustment and tweaked the color balance.

hope you find this helpful and good luck with finishing it up

[cgmythology]

JyonnyNovice: Thanks for your suggestions, updated and finalized the image, hope it works much better now!

xelfereht:  That is incredible!   Just ridiculously helpful, thank you kindly for taking the time to do that, really appreciate it.  I implemented all your advice and suggestions via the paintover and the image works so much better now!

.............

Took some time off work and had the chance to finalize the image!  Thanks to everyone for taking the time to offer critique and suggestions, was very helpful and I'm quite pleased with the final image.  Here it is:

[tchangchang]

Congrats on finishing the piece, it looks great! Was cool to see the evolution from sketch to final rendering. Great job pushing the piece to greater heights with every iteration, and implementing the great suggetsions. I really like the addition of the cave roof from above, cause it makes it obvious that they are heading into the underworld, and also nicely frames the skeleton's face as the focal point.

[cgmythology]

tchangchang:  Thank you for the positive words!  Glad  you liked the addition of the cave as well, I hoped it would bring the image together more so I'm glad it was successful in that regard!

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Been doing a lot of pieces that were a bit complex, so I wanted to slow things down and tackle something simpler.  I finished up a sketch based on Metroid from the popular Nintendo games, pretty pleased with it.  It's looking a bit symmetrical but I think I can fix that when I tackle detail and texture work later on in the process.  Any input before I begin would be especially helpful!

[chubby_cat]

The grim reaper piece turned out super nice! Well done on pushing it to really bring in the atmosphere

With the latest image, I agree with your thoughts on symmetry - it's a mech suit/armour to boot, so there isn't much you can do to not make it look symmetrical in the drawing haha.
There are a couple of quick things I've highlighted that are worth looking over. The first being the tangents where everything meets. The left side is more obvious, whereas the right is on the cusp of being a tangent. It might pay to move things around to avoid this awkward looking spot.
It would be interesting to see more shape size difference in the two glass shards - they are actually almost identical in width. Playing around with big/medium/small could also help bring attention away from the overall symmetry of it all

:)

[JyonnyNovice]

congrats! the grim reaper piece looks really great!

[cgmythology]

JyonnyNovice:  Thanks, much appreciated!

.........

I finished up the painting process for the Metroid piece, everything went surprisingly smooth!  Here is the final image followed by a step by step animation for those interested:

[darktiste]

I think it really nice but they are problem with symmetry in my opinion it tend to create a feeling of solidy and stillness.I do give you that there some asymmetry of the glass and in the texture which help break that.I also i think the canva itself since it squarish increase even more that symmetry aspect.So it nothing against the piece itself it more to bring up the importance of utilizing the frame also to sell your idea and to support the omposition.A head shot tend to be static anyways i would say it really the emotion and the angle of the head that could for me create a more dynamic composition if that something you wanted instead.I think you have great skill i am maybe over analyzing thing asking myself for example if you did any iteration in term of composition i am also thinking about if your next big step wouldn't be to pay more attention to composition and framing maybe you could do some movie study idk how you go about learning composition since most of the thing i see are personal piece do you do composition study on the side?

[Dominicque]

That Metroid piece would make a fantastic cover. Love how you coloured it. Do you explain up the thread? Because, I'll look through.

[Zorrentos]

The last Metroid piece looks great! Awesome separation of shapes and rendering of the materials! Really like the composition as well!

[Ash]

Love the last piece! Those colors and textures! And everything in the piece pulls you right in!

[cgmythology]

darktiste:  Excellent point about the symmetry, I tried to break that a bit with the green glass but I guess I should have pushed that aspect further.  I'm studying composition as well further, so hopefully I'll improve in that aspect soon! 

Dominicque:  Thank you!  Had a lot of fun with this one.  I attached a process .gif in a previous post, so hopefully that help give you an idea of how I painted it!

Zorrentos: Thanks, much appreciated!

Ash:  Thanks, glad to hear it!


..........

Started work on a new sketch, spent a lot of time on this one trying to get everything just right.  I'm pretty happy with it but always open to feedback before I begin the painting process, so please feel free to share any input!  The figures were referenced from Grafit References as well.

[Zorrentos]

Great job on the sketch! I had a few thoughts about it that may help! Feel free to use as you please! : )

[cgmythology]

Zorrentos:  Thank you!  The sketch/poses you did work ridiculously well, much more dynamic!  Thank you for taking the time to do that, really appreciate.  Just applied the new poses as well, very happy with them!

............

I resumed work on the image, updated the poses as suggested for something much more dynamic.  I began the painting process as well, still a bit early but I'm mostly satisfied with my color choices.  Here is the current progress:




Any feedback appreciated as always!

[cgmythology]

I resumed working on the image, it has come quite a long way!  Will try to push the details as far as I can with this one, very pleased with how it's turning out.  Feedback welcome as always!