Castle Paradox

[Komera]

Sorry haven't been around... but I've been working on the malacat picture even more. I've updated the picture at the above link. It's not quite new, it's improved... the shadow on the sand still isn't quite right. I still have a few areas to work on before I can completely get rid of the outline... and he STILL doesn't look like he's sitting on the sand. I still feel it needs something else in the picture with it (Alphaknight says I should put malacat cubs next to it). I'm open to suggestions. Rather than repost the link, I'll just direct you (or anyone who wants to look) back up to my previous link.

As I promised, my critique:
I'm not quite sure if you were aiming for silly or disgusting, I see both but it leans towards silly. Individual parts are grotesque, but as a whole it is nothing remotely more than a joke of whatever god created it.

The skin wrinkles are up to your usual brilliant standard, reminding me of a slightly dehydrated worm (which I've disected way back in 7th grade). It does not seem that the dragon has hips... just the socket part of the leg bone supporting the back bone. Just before where the hip should be, where you did a wonderful job of caving in the abdomin... I would have liked to see that cave in extend a bit farther forward, though mostly it would be nice to see a division between back muscles and abdomine organs- such as equines, canines, and felines have.

The back feet have such wonderful loose elephant-ish skin that the front feet just look laughable in comparison. The varicose veins on the front feel look like they were painted onto the skin. Otherwise it would have been a lovely detail.

That lighted tail... it's very RedXIII like. I would have thought it would be funnier if the tail was a horn and the light was on the dragon's head... like an anglerfish. I suppose the tail is supposed to be metal, but this is a somewhat rare instance (of what I've seen of your work, anyway) where it just fails miserably.

The fins on his back, they're so UNdetailed that it almost literally hurts to try and associate them with the rest of the dragon. And the belly scales, it looks like they have such wonderful detail UNDER the surface. The line drawing suggests that the scales aren't smooth, but your coloring job suggests that dispite the rough undering, the surface itself is smooth as glass. Maybe having dry patches would make the scales fit in with the severly folded skin, but definite roughing up is in order.

The collar is more metal like than the tail. I adore the rust, though somehow it just doesn't quite make it to metal for me. It looks more plastic than metal.

If you could lighten up the division between the horn segments, that horn would look absolutely realistic. Right now, the dark divisions make it look ... cartoony.

The sack... is it supposed to be warty? The line drawing indicates so, but strangely the warts are only at the side of what we can see of the sack. The varicose veins here work better than the ones on the front feet. The warts (or about to explode white heads as two of them looks to have been drawn like) seem too regularly placed at the edge, and their absence from the rest of the sack makes the sack look like a chainsaw (ah... those memories of going firewood cutting...).

Now my two favorite parts: I simply adore that crescent shape behind the dragon's eyes. It looks like a boa is sliding under his skin. And I like the snot and drool. I don't agree with the way it's dripping down the dragon's sigular tooth, but where it drips from the mouth is divine in a "Persistence of Memory" kind of way.

But let us not forget the rest of the drawing. The chain (I assume it's a chain) I'll ignore, being so far away from the viewer that it is just a line. The man (gender assumption) is very under detailed and maybe intentionaly so that attention will go right to the dragon. But once one gets used to the level of detail in the dragon, one's eye goes right to the under detailed man. He appears to be a rag doll on a string- that's how badly unproportioned you left him.

Shadows aren't easy to get right. That I'm reworking the shadows in the Malacat picture is evidence of that (and they're still not pointing in the right direction). The shadows under the dragon and the man do not point in the same direction, nor do they agree with the shading on either dragon or man. The man's shading says the light is on the right side of the screen, while his shadow says the light is on the left. On the dragon the light looks like it's also on the right, while the shadow says the light is more or less directly above the dragon.

BTW- should not the snot and drool have dripped onto the floor by now?
_________________
LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[Komera]

[Komera]

Oh NOW it posts my post almost TWO DAYS later?

The rest of the cretique read:

... He appears to be a rag doll on a string- that's how badly disproportionate he is. He's so moronically smooth that I can't help but think he's full of stuffing and that he needs some needles and pins to fit in with voodoo.com. Sure he's so far away from the camera that detail blurs... but even from far away this guy shouldn't look like a glass doll prize from Coney Island.

Shadows are not easy to do, the fact that I'm redoing the shadows on sand in the Malacat picture should be evidence of this. The shading on the dragon and the man suggests that the light is on their left (the picture's right), but the man's shadow points to his right (the picture's left) while the dragon's shadow looks like the light should be directly above the dragon.

If I sound harsh, it's because I simply do not believe that this picture is up to your usual quality.
_________________
LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[Royal]

Komera...heh you are amazing
Thats an excellent critique.
You pretty much nailed everything down.
It's probably pretty obvious that this is not a picture I spent too much time on (roughly around 4 hours in ps). I like some parts of it as you pointed out but some are just rushed past and therfore lack of detail.
I will definately take all you points in consideration when doing my next picture.
The lighting issue is what I think is my biggest problem in this piece cause it flattens it all out too much. I should have picked a lightsource from the beginning instead of just playing around with textures. Good point.

I'll get back to you on the malacat pic Komera.


Chaz Van Laden and Nagatoki; Well, get some sense of humor. Just because I don't draw what everyone else expects it's not right to say my stuff isn't inpirational. If you don't have anything constructive to say then dont say nothing at all.

[Squall]

Well, there's two types of inspirational pictures;

1) Pictures of angels and stuff like that.

2) Pictures that make you want to learn how to draw more.

It seems that people are expecting stuff from catagory 1, but you're giving them stuff from catagory 2, which I would prefer any day.