Moonlight Boogie

Believe

Awhile ago I was asking for help drawing starfields in the Questions thread. Well, I finished that drawing!

Fanart for Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is Yue at the Season 1 season finale. Avid ATLA watchers will get it. I cheated on the starfield when manually drawing it wasn't working (what you see is mostly a Photoshop thing), but other than that, it was all done by hand from memory, only ref used was for the moon.


FYI, this is finished, so it's unlikely I'll make any changes to it, especially considering the file is ENORMOUS (the picture I put up is at 15% zoomed), BUT I will keep any and all crits and advice in mind for the future.

detail shot
detail shot

iceberg

Fanart or no, it's really rather boring and uninspired.

Believe

O_o that's... not the feeling I got from anyone else who looked at it, not even from my sister (who used to be a very good artist and always has some kind of criticism for me, but was actually enthusiastic about this one).

Now that I look at it, though, I do see why you say that and kind of agree. Poo.

How would you suggest making it more interesting, though?

Shiboe

A few things:

The largest problem is the character coloring, and to a lesser extent, her line-work. It's very meh, gradient style, and relatively monotone. You take one color, add some black or white, and it ends up looking drab. Use color to indicate highlight, shade, and depth. I'm by no means an expert on this, but you can take a look around the forum to see those who are. Find what looks good, not "ok" or "decent," but really good, and try to figure out why. Look at the use of color to indicate shape and light.

Next is the difference in detail. The background did turn out good, and when you put a simplistic cartoon over it, both are cheapened. It would take a very deliberate artist to pull that off, and often things look much better when they are styled the same, with the similar detail and care. Unfortunately you indicate that the star field is "mostly a Photoshop thing," and when the strongest element in your piece is something you didn't really do, you're in trouble.

Lastly, the characters line-work itself is really flat. There is not much depth or shape to her body, along with some anatomical issues (for example that near thigh is really short). I'm guessing you would counter with the cloth folds, but honestly, I'm betting that is a memorized formula you carry from one piece to the other, because you see those types of folds in alot of animish/interweb drawings. A question to determine is, could you draw that cloth if it was folded differently?
ex: http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Simmons,%20Jean/Annex/Annex%20-%20Simmons,%20Jean%20(Robe,%20The)_01.jpg

couch-potato

Her body is very parallel - give her some curves, and I'd suggest a darker shadow tone to emphasize that she's floating right next to the moon. Is she flying? Floating? Falling? Her overall body position is somewhat awkward, push some extremes to emphasize what the character is actually doing. Lastly, her ribbon above her head has virtually no shading to it, while the rest of her body does.

Believe

couch-potato wrote: »

Her body is very parallel - give her some curves, and I'd suggest a darker shadow tone to emphasize that she's floating right next to the moon. Is she flying? Floating? Falling? Her overall body position is somewhat awkward, push some extremes to emphasize what the character is actually doing. Lastly, her ribbon above her head has virtually no shading to it, while the rest of her body does.

I was actually worried about the shading because this was done at school, and my school's monitors are a lot darker than the one I use at home. The sky didn't look quite as blue, and her shading looked a lot darker.

Wouldn't mind some tips on how to shade the inside of the sleeves, either. I'm not used to transparent cloth (which I did here to practice).