well then, guess it's not done!

Mykonos

I posted the development of this numouras times in the doodle-thread, but in the end after spending 30+ hours on this I didn't feel right posting the finished piece in there, so sorry for the redudancy.





Hi-Res

I hope you guys see an improvement. I promise this is the last sci fi pretty boy I do for a while :P

edit: I'll need to go back and clean it up, but I'm taking a break from this damn thing

Mustang

It's very nice, though the subject matter isn't really my cup of tea.
However he seems a bit thick around the hips, not that it's anatomically incorrect, just that he looks like he's got a huge ass for a fighting type person.

winter_combat_knight

Looks much better in Hi-Res. Very nice. I like the detain in the face and the overall tone on the character. He looks much cooler than Raiden from MGS2.

Fantasyrogue

I really like the detail in the face and it's nice to see the finished piece, finished it does look different from the WIP pieces posted in the doodle thread. Seeing the steps to create something is always cool. I do think it's a bit of a shame that you haven't tightened up the hands a bit especially the one gripping the sword. The sword itself is also somewhat sloppily done, the handle and the blade don't line up for instance.

Now get cracking on something not sci-fi dude related!

Mykonos

yeah, ur right, hips were way to big so I made a quick fix. I also went ahead and darkened the areas around the eyes a bit and did some minor clean up. Definetely need to hit the sword when I get a chance as well. thanks for the comments so far guys.

edit: did minor fix on the sword, tightened up the grip on the hand holding it

Scosglen

Are you just puffing up your chest or did you seriously work on this picture for 30 hours?

Specifics:

-The purple around the ears is sort of a perplexing choice and seems out of place given the rest of your palette.

-His right hand's gesture is just weird. Not that is isn't possible, there just doesn't seem to be any reason at all for him to have his hand contorted over to the side like that, aside from what appears to be a mis-fired attempt at making him look cooler. He looks like he's petting an invisible dog. Hands are important--take your time and make sure they're contributing to the character and not confusing or even detracting.

-The bodysuit has too much dead black. It's hurting the believability of the rendering and making it very hard to tell where your lightsource is, or even read the actual form of the suit itself since every nook looks like it's sunken into a black hole.

General:

-I'm going to keep saying this until I think it's no longer valid--I think you are relying way too much on photoshop to weave your paintings together. On a cursory glance in this picture alone I see a texture overlay, what seems to be a photograph of a cityscape composited into the background, and at least one brush(Seriously, stop using that rake brush) that is hurting almost as much as it's helping. It's a lot easier for you and us both to tell what you need to work on when you aren't leaning on crutches.

-If you were a little more adventurous with your composition and color choice, you could draw bucksome young clean-shaven solid snake clones until kingdom come. How do you think wakkawa gets away with almost exclusively drawing voluptuous women and monsters? Because while his subject matter is fairly stale, he is constantly experimenting with extreme variations in composition, design, color schemes, and rendering styles. It doesn't really matter much WHAT you're drawing, but it does become a problem when you keep approaching it the exact same way as well.

ManonvonSuperock

Next time you work on one of these, compose the entire picture, background/ foreground/ each body part all at once. If at any point in time you stop working on your picture, every square inch should be at roughly the same level of completeness. Your faces have more detail than your torsos, which have more detail than your accessories, which have more detail than your hands, which have more detail than your legs/thighs, which have more detail than your background.

That can be used to portray depth of field, but that's not how you are using it. Everything that is not as finished as your face doesn't give the illusion of atmospheric perspective or focal blurring, it reveals laziness. Your hands not being finished says "I'm not confident with my ability to draw them."

The hatched over, scribbled in background is part of what is killing this as well.

If I'm not mistaken, you've been told by multiple forumers to render that black bodysuit using color, because that is how light works.

My suggestions: Pump out multiple traditional-medium drawings of bodies and hands, without matrix bodysuits. In doing these I would suggest not doing anything to the face/head except plot the structure. Along with these practice drawing architecture, plant-life, perspective, geographic locations, etc. After you begin to show that you are as comfortable with each of those areas as you are with digitally rendering that one face, then pick up some real paints and brushes and start composing paintings, working on the whole image at once. Whatever you need to do to break those obvious digital crutches that Scosglen pointed out.

Mykonos

Thanks for the direct inputs Scosglen manonvon. As tough as it is for me to follow through on some advice I do greatly appreciate it.

I was trying to get that real painterly look with this one which may have been the result of me over using the texture brush. I did use some photo-texture overlay on the columns and the wall beneath it, and lower part of the city as well, then painted over it. I'm trying do something like Jason Felix does, a good example would be his cover of Robotica.

I would say with the various revisions, experimenting, and redo's it did make me a seriouse ass long time. The face especially took up most of it, I was never satisfied. I would take a break and come back to it and be like, oh god - fugly!

thanks again for the crits

Scosglen

Since I am prone to doing completely unprovoked paintovers, I just spend 30 minutes or so illustrating some of the things I mentioned to help you see. I added a subtle blue tone to his body suit to help with the color interest. Even if the suit actually is black, unless he's standing in a totally empty room with a white light by him it won't *look* black because there is reflected light coming from every which way and that direct light is seldom pure in the first place. In this case that big window in the background is probably letting tons of sky-light in, which generally makes things tint towards blue.

I tried to eradicate all of the "black hole" areas and fill in the vagueness of his bodysuit so that there is a clearer light model. REFLECTED LIGHT, which generally lives in those areas that were pure black is a very important part of the overall light model. I added a slight rim-highlight on his backside since the window itself acts as a relatively strong lightsource.

Stupid little composition tricks can be very effective if employed right. I tightened up background pillars and sky near the head so that there is some very strong light-dark contrast going on in this area. The rim highlights help draw the eye up to the face that you lovingly spent so much time rendering. The coolness of the body suit also contrasts with the warm hues in the face, further enforcing the focal point.

I made a few other minor tweaks all over to please my own nit-picky nature. I used A SINGLE HARD ROUND BRUSH FOR THE ENTIRE PROCESS. This is by no means the "best" way to help some of the issues in this piece, but it's how I would go about fixing some of the issues. Hopefully you can glean some insight into how you would go about it by seeing how I did.

ManonvonSuperock

good work on the paintover, that does illustrate some of the points very well, especially the hand.

Mykonos

thanks a ton for paintover, that's giving me some real good insight as to how its done. I'll do my best to incorporate such methods into my next piece

NightDragon

Your palette is very dull, with an odd choice of placement in your colors...it's bringing attention to the wrong areas.

Try adding some color in next time. Black and gray are not always completely black and gray, really...there's stuff like reflected light from the sun, sky, etc...especially on the material he's covered in.

MufasaJoe

I feel like Mykonos needs to become familiar with the saga of Lalliluelo, who never really gave up on textures, as Myk seems unable to do. Unfortunately, I can't find any of his old work versus the new work, which is a damn shame, but if you're gonna fuck with photoshop just because you can, Lalli is a good place to look. All of the problems you are having now remind me of problems in older Lalli threads, which if you could find, would probably be a great resource.

Edit: Lalilulelo

Lly

Yeah the parrallel with Lalliluwhatever is pretty accurate. Mykonos stop focusing on details and work on composition more. The pictures you produce as a whole are pretty uninspiring, and whilst some of the detail is nice, you shouldn't even get to that point before you have an interesting picture roughed out. I'm prone to falling into the same trap, and it's a hard one to break, but it's a trap you really need to break. As do I.

Mykonos

oh wow, I just checked out some of lali's threads, I guess it does remind me of what I'm currently posting. I did remember seeing a newer thread of his though, some of the stuff was amazing.

MaximasXXZ

Ya know at first I thought this was a Lali thread. What with everything already mentioned, and the fact that that guy looks very "inspired" by a certain famous Konami/Kojima Productions character... though I can't think of his name...

Mykonos

k, I'm currently redoing some of it with the changes you guys recommended. Here are the changes so far

MagicToaster

Why don't you just start over? Projects that drag on too long tend to get stale.

Scosglen

Seriously, I think it's time to move on.

beavotron

i agree with scos, though i do think it's really awesome that you're taking the crits seriously and are showing a really positive attitude in trying to make this better, sometimes it's best to just leave it as is, and just keep the crits in mind for the next project.
approaching something new with a fresh outlook is sometimes the best option when trying to improve artistically

srsizzy

I wouldn't start over so much as do something else entirely.

Lly

Draw a naked wummenz! (seriously, i agree on the "moving on" motion.)

desperaterobots

I'd consider breaking your next move into a few pieces; work on making interiors look shit hot, then exteriors, then figures and posing, all the while picking up the skills on making your lighting and rendering less dependant on texturised brushes...

and then try this piece again. marvel at your progress when you Dare To Compare!