I'm legitimately embarrassed by the thingy I posted, so I made it go away. I'll work on it (probably) and erpost when it's all better.

Everyone else's entries are looking fantastic, by the way. truly impressive stuff. 

Hey, Josh. Welcome to the boards. I did an edit of your bomb to help illustrate some crits... hope you don't mind:



The main problem here, I think, is lack of contrast. Your shades are very close together here, giving the piece a dull, kind of flat look. Given the proximity of the light source to the bomb (The most logical lightsource being the spark/flame deal).

The light source/shading was the second big change here. Like I said, the spark would be the most logical light source, but in you picture, the light appears to be coming from the bottom left hand side, as opposed to the upper right. I also altered the shading a bit to give the bomb more depth, basically meaning I make the highlights/shadows form more of a circular pattern... if that makes sense.

Finally, I changed the palette. As a general rule, straight greys are kinds bland, and shifting hues usually makes a piece more visually appealing. Note here how the pallet basically shifts from purple (in the shadows) to green-blue (highlights). It's a shift towards the yellow end of the spectrum, as the lightsource seems to have a yellow tint... I thought it made sense I dunno...

The lines here, I didn't change at all. They were solid to begin with, so there was no need . Last thing... I apologize in advance, as I'm sure this is long and (unintentionally) rambling. I'm... incredibly tired at the moment, and at work, and... losing focus, so if it's really garbled, just let me know and I'll try to clarify... Anyway, keep pixelling! It's always great to see people getting into it.

looks pretty cool, but it'd be nice to see it at 1x zoom. This forum has an automatic zoom function, so... no need to submit at 2x or whatever.

Also, I'd ditch the gradient background (pretty weak crit, I know, but it's all I've got atm).

Minor update, first post. Thanks for the crits, guys!

GS: I tweaked the stars, but I have the feeling that no amount of tweakage'll change up your mind on the matter . I hopefully rectified the divide problem. Inspiration? Reasoning? Yes... those sound vaguely familiar... Dunno, to be honest, but I'll make something up.

I actually, initially, only had the naked man flying, then decided he looked rather dream like and thought "how can I distance this from reality even more?" The answer, of course, was (as it so often is in life) "elephant". The stars were an after thought, sort of. I decided, again, in keeping w/ the "dream" theme, that he should be chasing the stars, as it were.

Vedsten: Hehe It does looks a bit odd, I suppose... Then again, his anatomy all-around is pretty far gone, far as realism goes. I was going for more of a symbolic thing with the anatomy (that is, it's recognizable as human, but clearly is very distorted). I'm more than open to suggestions, though. How d'you reckon I go about it?

Helm: Knowing that you're one who gives and values serious critique, I take that as a pretty significant compliment (to understate things ). I wasn't exactly sure which line you were referring to, but.. I think I got it. Yes?

Werewolf: Never heard of that book; I must look it up now. The wrists were intentional, (see the reply to Ved's comment on ribcage) but if it looks bad, I'm, again, more than open to suggestion. Heh, A big part of art is looking good, after all.

Thanks, guys. Hoping for more crits, as usual. More, I say!