[C+C] Treasure chest

[Aniki]

I've been experimenting with color ramping and anti-aliasing with pretty mixed results.



There is a lot going on in this piece and I'm mostly looking for general advice to make it look more interesting. I think the area most in need of improvement is the highlighting. I'm thinking of the light coming down and striking the front-most corner, and the the gold is reflecting a bit making the chest light up in that area.

It doesn't look quite right. I'm also having trouble adding highlights on the side. No highlights looks best so far, and maybe I want to have no highlights in the area with shadow?

What do you guys think? All comments and criticisms appreciated

[MysteryMeat]

First thing I noticed was that you didn't factor the light-source and shadow of the lid into the gold!

(Edit: Side-by-side now, for easy viewing. Mine on left, original on right.)
I didn't fix everything, of course, but your light source appears to be coming from the viewer perspective towards the leading corner of the chest.
Given that, you should /also/ try to tweak the shading on the side of the chest to reflect that light source!

[rocifier]

I can't really see much evidence of color ramping or AA, but I would suggest some things:

- Define a clear light source (this includes casting shadows as already mentioned)
- Work on your perspective. The subject is a box plus a cylinder cut in half. You can easily model lighting and rough in some perspective lines when thinking like that - currently the circular part on the box looks out.
- Work on the design. For example, load that chest will all kind of treasure, place treasure around it. Think about different textures and wear and textures or patterns on the box. Currently it's very much "wood is brown" and "metal is grey" but you need to think about its environment and reflections too. Also the fact that someone would have designed and built it in a certain era. You could try compiling a list of reference images. Try to break away from stereotypical a little and make something different.
- Modify the palette. Here is an example (just my take on it, I have my own style), plus an example of texture and lighting on the lid:

[Aniki]

Thanks for the advice. Your wood texture looks really impressive. Your is too noisy for my style but it makes me want to ding my wood up a bit, and make the colors a bit rustier.

I worked on the perspective and made the lighting consistent. I went a bit more adventurous with the colors I tried to make more contrast with complimentary colors. I wanted to make it more interesting to look at and also have the lock make more sense so I added a chain.



I'm imagining that the chain was cut and I tried leaving a cut mark on the chest but i'm having trouble due to how much texture there is and i'm not sure of a good approach to show the mark has depth

[aamatniekss]

Very nice improvements already!
It lacks some contrast though at places, here's a rough paint over adding a bit more contrast



Also it's all very, very messy, but that's just the style I guess. But I suggest trying to clean it up, think more about where you place your pixels, use more contrasting colours overall. And clean up some of the noise etc.

[rocifier]

Cool. Glad I could inspire you a bit to add something different and more ruggedness - that was my intention as you're right my edit was too noisy.

Loving the chain! Definitely a big improvement. I'd push it all further. More colours and more complimentary colours, more design elements, more gold items not only coins. Keep thinking like you are with story (eg. someone cut the chain) as that is really showing in the piece now, adding interest.

For the slash mark in the wood, add a subtle highlight edge where the light hits it and bounces off - a shadow by itself is not enough.

One thing I'd add to further aamatniekss' comments - I think adding some "lost" detail would help hugely in this piece. ie. you don't need to detail every wood grain. Here is a quick and dirty edit (ok again it's too extreme and the palette doesn't quite allow for what im trying to do, but the basic idea is to reduce detail where you reduce contrast where you reduce light where you leave your focal point):

[Aniki]

Okay it's definitely 3am my time so I want to post a status update for now.

Fading the texture in high contrast areas really helped.. in fact the more I took away, the better it looked to me. I also upped the contrast in general and went back over and tried to make my texturing much smoother and clean up how messy it was. Especially the highlights.



I went big. I put the horizon where the vanishing point is but I'm not sure it looks right. Additionally i'm not sure about the sand texture and could use some advice.

Thanks so much guys, you've really pushed me. I'm so happy with what I've made so far

[MysteryMeat]

Notes: sometimes you gotta flub perspective in favor of composition, lower the horizon or raise/deform it enough to break the effect it's got now where everything is lost for all the details clashing with each other.
Second, it looks like marble rather than sand both for the lack of gritty texture and the way it's just totally flat under the chest. Bulge it up around the bottom, put mounds in! Sand bunches up into ridges!

[Runensucher]

There is this crack going from the wood into the metal. It's just a detail, but you may fix it in no time. It would not crack like that. Let the crack go right under the metal edge.

[Jehannum]

There is this crack going from the wood into the metal. It's just a detail, but you may fix it in no time. It would not crack like that. Let the crack go right under the metal edge.

if the "crack"was caused by an axe chopping into it, it could potentially embed itself into the metal rather than cutting right through. Of course it's up to the artist to define what type of crack it is (lol) and personally I'd remove it from the metal entirely like @Runensucher suggests, but if it is from an axe chop, perhaps you could just remove some of the black line from the metal so it doesn't "turn" round the corner, and even better if it doesn't touch the corner at all.