@Dennis and astraldata: I'm short on time, so I can't respond with the length of post that you two deserve, but I definitely appreciate you (politely!) discussing this. Naturally the three of us have had different experiences with art and won't agree on every detail, but it's clear now that I objected to what you, astraldata, wrote mainly because I misinterpreted you. Sorry I was so brisk!

@oderdrt9: Apologies about derailing your thread. I look forward to watching this improve; good luck!

First of all, as someone who has an unbridled obsession with the order Testudines, I must say that I approve of your subject matter.

You've got a good start going, but there are some pretty big issues with proportion and form. I couldn't resist doing an edit, so here's the ridiculously messy result of about an hour and half of scribbling over your work:



There's a lot wrong with my edit, so I wouldn't read into it too much, but hopefully you get the idea. Here are some of the main things I see:

-It looks like you went into detailing before you got the main forms down. This flattens the whole thing, especially under his "chin," like you noticed. Focus on giving him a depth before adding all the little bumps and wrinkles.

-Another issue in the area under the chin -- you added a scale-like texture when the reference actually shows more of a wrinkled-looking skin. If you google "tortoise skin" and scroll for a while, you'll find that many tortoises/turtles have a lot of areas bare of scales (which helps them be flexible and articulate enough to do things like tuck their heads into their shells).

-A lot of the colors are very close to each other in value, and more contrast would help make it pop. Particularly brighten the highlights on the top of the head because that would add more depth and also makes the lighting clearer.

-The proportions are very different from your reference's in some spots. The ones that stick out immediately: his nostrils should be bigger (they're about the same size as his pupils in the reference), and the whole mouth/nose region should take up more space; the eyes should be further apart and less centered; and his head should curve in a tiny bit towards the middle before going out again.

-I don't think mirroring and then going in and changing some parts is going to work in the long run for this guy; there's a bunch of asymmetry in your reference, and adding in the extra work to show it all would make him look a lot more life-like.


I know I'm forgetting stuff as I write this, but I'm tired and probably getting less and less coherent. Hopefully something in that garbledook was useful to you. Keep going with this!

Update! I've been trying to incorporate your advice and also fix other things I saw. Sorry for the slow progress!



Getting closer to completion, but I've still got some polishing to do. Some notes since last time:

-I swapped Victor's and Elizabeth's positions because, as I drew, I noticed that the diagonals the heads made formed a nice triangular shape when arranged that way. However, now all of the characters are staring off into space -- I've been looking at this too long to be a good judge, but I'm guessing that the way this affects how the viewer's eye travels around the image isn't good. Opinions?

-The text is looking better, but some parts are still iffy (like the S, which looks pretty ugly).

-I'll probably need to tone down the triangles on the border so they're not quite as distracting. This view might give a better sense of what it looks like than the forum background.

-With varying degrees of success, I tried to implement Manupix's concept for the different color balances for each character. Can't tell if it's noticeable, but it was fun to play with!

Nothing else I can think of off the top of my head. Feedback on the above or anything else would be greatly appreciated!

Alright, I'm back -- busy past few days; sorry I didn't update sooner!

Nothing huge done so far, mostly I just cleaned up Victor some (I decided to stick with the original set of light sources after all) and played with the borders a bit. Elizabeth and all of her gloriously anachronistic hair have been scrapped while I search for references, and I also got rid of the "Prometheus" for the moment.

Don't be afraid to cheat and use a real font. Typeface can really convey emotion if you know which ones to use.

I'm no fan of how the main word (Prometheus) is a smaller and less readable font. . . . I see this: P--r-ome-the-uS

Looks like, at the very least, I'll have to test out different fonts for "Prometheus" until I find one I like, or get good enough reference/inspiration to draw something decent myself. Do either of you have any suggestions on where to start?

I would also encourage, but this is up to you, an alternative design to the monster rather than relying on the iconography of the Boris Karloff film. Maybe take a description from the book and use that with other non-related ref to come up with a design we haven't all seen before.

Ah, yeah, you hate the nail on the head. This depiction has been done to death so many times -- I'm kinda annoyed I didn't think of deviating from it earlier in the process before I spent so many hours on it. That said, coming up with alternative designs would probably be pretty fun anyway. I'll try to do that once I can get my hands on the book again!

More difficult, I'd try to give them some 'feeling' according to their characters and destinies (I have no idea how you go about and do that).
Maybe use color to emphasize that: assign each of them a main color?

That's a really cool idea! Probably would be a little hard to implement, but I'll have to play with doing something along those lines as I keep working.

Anyway, I'll keep chipping away at this. Thanks again for the feedback!