Digital Art Zone

JoeMamma2000 - 13 August 2012 04:40 AM

I’ll give you my 2 cents (as objectively as possible) on what you’ve posted in case it might help.

Thank you for taking the time with your constructive feedback, it’s greatly appreciated.

Serengeti Zebra

Summer at The Lake

paulbrake - 13 August 2012 04:12 PM

Summer at The Lake

The lake render is nice. I like the water splash. I do have to admit though, that the figure’s head looks out of proportion to it’s body, which kind takes me out of the image.

Trying to decide on a design for a house for when I retire. This one is modeled after a real house in Northern California. One cool thing about 3D modelling is you can design a basic concept and then give it to the architect and he can make it work. Or more likely, tell you “what are you, nuts?? This will never work”.

The one with the girl and a dragon is called Rare moments of peace and the other is Power lying dormant. Both have been enhanced in photoshop in the attempt to figure out how the whole postwork part. First less than the second.

I’ve been having some fun with Carrara Terrain.

paulbrake - 13 August 2012 04:11 PM

Serengeti Zebra

All of the images are good.  I like this one but The dragon, Hesitation,Apocalypse the most for the story they portray.

de3an - 13 August 2012 11:48 AM

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Yay, the lil’ piggy is back! :D

edit (talking bout the piggy avatar, just to be clear )

Slight update to one I have been working on off and on called “The Rescue”.

Still a WIP.

Ilena52, my 2 cents on your images…

I like the sense of the images, but you really like dark images, don’t you? 

Honestly, in my initial views of the two images, especially the second, I couldn’t figure out what they were. If you bring the second into Photoshop and check the levels, you’ll see that 90% of the image is almost totally black. Now I know you want it dark to imply suspense and imminent danger, but areas of total or near black don’t really provide any sensation or interest. And the character hiding in the darkness is pretty much indistinguishable, and without some clear highlighting you can’t see the evil in his eyes, or even what he is. Maybe a single shaft of light piercing the trees and only partially lighting his face, to show evil glowing eyes and a toothy snarl, dripping saliva, etc.

The first image is a similar, but not as much. It is mostly black or white, with very little midrange. I honestly couldn’t tell from the dragon’s wings what it was, and it looked more like some sort of spear or weapon in her hand. I assume you want the second image to have a sense of serenity, but with such a high contrast image with only black and white, you’re losing the opportunity to have softness and beauty, such as soft light streaming thru the green leaves casting a serene soft light on everything. I think that, by not really showing much more than the dragon’s wings, you’ve also lost the opportunity to depict a very interesting character, a pet dragon that would make most viewers think “Ahhh, how sweet…” 

Given the choice between totally black and/or totally white, versus a fuller range of color and shading, I think choosing a fuller range can give you the opportunity to depict a lot more emotion and dynamics and story. And that certainly doesn’t mean you need to make all your dark areas light, just give them a slightly broader dynamic range to provide some interest. The old masters of black and white film noir were experts at that. But with CG we have even more control and can paint an even broader range of emotion.

Here’s an image I just put together to try and illustrate the point I was trying to make.

In this image there is only one spotlight, no ambient, and a very narrow angle on the spot. As you can see, most of the image is black. However, the purpose of the black is solely to frame the important part of the image, which has a very broad dynamic range. And because of that dynamic range, you have the opportunity to show the viewer the implied power (the character’s detailed muscles), the interest of the character’s skin texture, etc. But you also show with just a single simple light the rage in the character’s face, but also have the darkness and shadow which implies danger, mystery, etc. 

The point is that blackness in an image is not a bad thing, but if you use it where you could be exposing some useful or interesting texture, then you could be missing an big opportunity to provide emotion, tension, mystery, etc.

BTW, paulbrake, I forgot to mention your Serengeti image…

It’s just gorgeous. A rare case of someone using colors to really set a mood. Very nice. And great poses for the zebras.

My only difficulty with the image is the rather awkward posing of the zebra’s legs, especially the one on the right. It’s front leg closest the camera looks like it’s broken. Not sure of the names for horse parts, but the femur looks like it’s broken since the “shoulder” part isn’t rotated like I *think* it should be. Might be a good opportunity to check some reference images for running horses.

With june contest where the theme was light and its tips and explanations I though I’d tackle with the topic and try to make something.Don’t know if this image shows that I’m one step closer to understanding how it works.

Looks pretty good. The lighting certainly looks like you’ve been working on it. The only thing it lacks is a sense of movement in the main figure. With the cloudy backdrop and the dragons wheeling around in the background your scene suggests that there should be some blowing wind. The hair should have morphs to adjust it’s shape to appear windblown. I’m sure that the skirts do as well. Just remember, these are only suggestions, so if you don’t think it fits your idea, then that’s cool.