I finally decided to give this CC a try. Tested @Joe's perspective grid technique, as well as applied stuff that I learned from S.Robertson (figured out that I got to practice more, I already know some theory and techniques, but quickly get get overwhelmed and mess stuff up when drawing something more complicated than a copy from that book. As a result, the ship is following some strange curve to get to the hangar and the hangar is not opposite to the teleport. It would be much easier to block stuff out in 3d).
Planet Xavia is a planet where technolofy and nature exist in symbiosis. Main economy sector is trade. It has the biggest intergalaxy market ever, a large area under a dome. Xanian architects prefer to cover buildings with a heptagon+diamond pattern, which is caused by local weather conditions as well as culture. Most of the ships arrive to the space station first, then after customs procedures via teleport to the planet. Being a large trade center, this planet is a dwelling area of all kinds of weird alien races, some of them shown in the foreground.
I must admit that thinking of all those exciting creatures is what inspires me to produce the environment for them :)
A wip and some studies.
Adjusted colors in the last reference fit my color scheme.
Despite the brief, it's more about execution than design for me now.
Yo Neo! finally found a time to give some comments on this.
first of I admire your consistency in your Illustration process. I've observed that you're really meticulous about your workflow and in nitpicking on your weaknesses.
Studies are well done! you rendered the materials you're going after very well.
As for your WIP, perhaps vary the rock shapes/Crystal(?) at the background a bit? those on the right side of the canvas.
also the scaling of those Crystal spiders just beside the ship indicates them being quite big I mean its fine if thats what you're after. but my suggestion would be to make them small for it to contrast with the ship. making the ship appear more massive.
anyways I understand you're still working at this, You already nailed the brief. all that is needed are rendering. So we'll have to wait for that before I can comment on more stuff. Keep it up !
Thank you for support and crits @Kurt!
Final here, see more studies in the Finals.
It was hard! I almost gave up on it in the very beginning.
And, it's my first Crucible digital submission without using Sketchup.
Wouldn't have done it without Alex Negrea's awesomest still live tutorial, really happy that I had a chance to apply it, as well as S.Robertson's How to draw book and @Joe's perspective technique. Well, my perspective isn't that good but at least I was aware of what I was doing :)
Hi-res http://imgur.com/uGCQM3p
Hey, I saw how many studies and exploring you did for your piece, that's really impressive.
I even saw you did a study on character grouping, and you noticed the diamond shape very well, but you didn't apply it your characters, why?
I mean look at how those 3 characters are grouped into one big shape, they have unity, you can easily read it as one shape, but in your piece, those 4 characters look like they're just placed in a row, they have no unity, no relationship, and therefore the viewer will treat them as separate elements.
I'm sorry, this is probably the least important thing I could say about your final artwork here, but I noticed how you did a good study but didn't apply it and wanted to bring that out.
Maybe the most important thing here would be values, you gotta try to separate foreground elements from background elements using values, but I'm sure Titus will mention that on the critique on Monday.
Thanks for 5he crits @Walent! It was a characters-on- background rendering study, actually, and I did it after my final sketch was ready. I was glad to discover the diamond shape in the study, but didn`t even think of applying it to my piec3, lol. Will to apply it somewhere else (or, maybe, in this piece after the crit stream). And yeah, got to work on my values. :)