AuthorTopic: GR#169 - Floating Island  (Read 12958 times)

Offline cels

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Re: Band Cover Art, Floating island, looking for critique

Reply #10 on: February 19, 2014, 09:51:12 pm
I'm curious about the composition here. I've been taught that it's a bad thing when an important object (in this case, the main object) touches the edges of the canvas. Wouldn't this piece benefit from a wee bit more air, or is this an exception to the rule for some reason?



Also, it really vexes me that there's an imbalance on the island underneath. Maybe it's just me being weird. I can't stop looking at it.

Offline HumpRAWR

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Re: Band Cover Art, Floating island, looking for critique

Reply #11 on: February 19, 2014, 10:46:16 pm
Coltrane: I LOVE that rock texture + the back lighting. I'm gonna see if I can work that into the piece when I get back to work. I could knock the color load down to 16 colors, but my aim isn't to restrict unless it adds to the statement, and I think that might be too far of a restriction in this case. Never-the-less, I'll see if I can give 16 colors and the palette change a try to see if I can really get the low-res nostalgia feel without detracting from the warm, cross-processed feel of the original. I really like your edit, but I think the mood of the colors is getting away from the mood I wanted to portray with this piece.

Cels: You're absolutely right about the tree touching the edge and it's been bothering me this entire time, but I'm planning on using this piece differently once I'm done with it, so I haven't bothered to scootch it out a few pixels (It's a square, so scootching the sides means scootching the top or bottom). So, I guess the exception is that the current frame isn't the final frame. I should probably fix it before I get too much farther, but I'm a lazy goober who's too excited about the progress to worry about it :blind:.

As for the weird why-is-the-tree-slightly-right-and-the-dirt-slightly-left thing that led to the bad framing, I intended on making it off-balance to make the viewer feel put off a bit and make it a bit organic. Technically, there wouldn't be a tree suspended on a tiny patch of dirt in the sky, but if there were, I doubt it would be centered very well. It's driving me insane, though, because if I center the whole thing, the tree isn't centered and the dirt isn't centered. I sort of have to choose one or the other or neither, never both. I really do think it portrays some sort of feeling I want the audience to feel, though, so I'm probably not going to reposition the tree compared to the dirt. If that makes you uncomfortable, then it does what I want, see?

Here's an example of an idea I had that I worked on before I saw the above comments (so none of them are incorporated). I have more ideas like this that I want to try, especially with the font and size. I'll use the feedback from these last couple comments before I get into those, though.

Offline HumpRAWR

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Re: Band Cover Art, Floating island, looking for critique

Reply #12 on: February 21, 2014, 09:24:58 pm
Well, I'm not liking it currently, but I'm not hating it, and I think it could be a good direction to go.
Advantage:
  • It really does look more like pixel art when I'm not using a billion colors. I really like the low-rez feeling.
  • It looks clearer at a small size when it has more contrast, and contrast is easier with less colors to choose.
Disadvantage:
  • I can't find the colors I want; the mood I wanted is getting lost. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium between destroying the colors of the bark or destroying the colors of the tree.
  • The image seems to be flatter. I might be able to fix that when I work through my other ideas, but right now it looks like I've stamped it down a bit.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. I have several things I could try and I'm not sure which ones I want to do.