Ok, that's a bit different, I think, from what everyone was guessing at. keep the legs then, yes, that would be a giveaway.

I'm not sure that the second back to basics version is an improvement; like Decroded mentioned it's looking a little squeezed in, if it might be quicker for you to design on paper, why not do so and transfer it more literally?

The Europese Eik seems to be English Oak, yeah, we just have a short-sighted naming system here on my island. There's a whole bunch of oaks on the mainland but that one has distinctive rounded lobes at the base of the leaf and carries the nut on a long stalk. Can live for many 100's of years and get nice and twisty.

Ah man! and the avatar Yeah, I recognise you from poking around those couple of tiny forums; I thought I might post up my results there for anyone interested to play with. It seems like the low barrier of entry to fiddling with these graphics was a starting point for a few people. Def. fun to get back to every once in a while.

I’m loving some of those! What’s with that glut of sensible colours though? 16 col. eye-bleed or go home yo! Did you not have a go at an engine re-creation as well?

Embarrassing lack of progress still. I can’t believe it’s been so long but I just can’t devote the time atm, sorry guys.

I don’t think I’ve seen a tree puppeteer-ing a suit of armour before – it’s a cool idea  .
 

It is a moving tree, how does it otherwise impersonate a guy wearing armour. All in all, it is sentient, and moves.

They’re saying - does it walk about, or it is fixed and just waves limbs?

I assumed a fully walking tree in a sort of mangrove style like a spider ‘cos it seemed more fun (if you preferred the big gnarly roots you could look at English Oak and Chestnut).

The comments about construction are probably aimed at some of the wobbly shapes and proportions; branches don’t seem to taper and idk what the spiky bits are. For the canopy I’d say less ‘blobby’ and more of a major mass with some ‘children’ for variety. Form-wise try lighting basic geometric stuff before texturing; the stamping patterns you've used I kinda like, but make sure they wrap around the underlying shapes. You seem to doing a bunch of this stuff in the pencil sketch already so apply it!
   
I didn’t get around to the armour, but it looks a bit invented: find a nice reference for proportions and materials first, and you can stylise however you want. atm your shading just doesn't look very confident; it’s hugging the edges a bit. I’d lose the legs of the latest ver. and probably the gauntlets too; you could maybe have the roots popping out to hold stuff.

I think it looks decent too, as a flat-styled image.

Not sure if this was a question: but if you want to show off form/dimension you gotta up the contrast/shadows within materials. 

Anything I did beyond that in my example isn't 'fixing' so much as detailing and refining to a different finish which you can attribute to the fact that tooning is fun, (all except the snaggle horn; just irked my sense of symmetry is all).   

er, I feel like maybe you’d already decided but anyhow: flip the gun the opposite way = just as vertical, no? Not sure what you mean by height problem exactly (getting cropped by the textbox or the size of the gun to the floor? won't the extra height be a problem up top?), but in the sketch that rife looks enormous to me; suppressor like a mace. and it does seem a bit like he's hoisting a flag or something.

Quote from: Facet on October 15, 2014, 10:27:43 pm

Telescopes don't seem out of place.

Telescopes aren't out of place and I'm well aware that they are not a recent technology.
Tactical Scopes of the same form as the one in the concept drawing however, uses highly refined lenses of which didn't come till later.
Anyway, its a non-issue if he isn't basing his universe of an Earth era as I had previously assumed.

Who’s arguing, man? was talkin’ bout utility, ie. the bayonet.