C+C How does this look - How can it be improved?

[I_am_secretly_a_cat]

Eventually this will be a gif with the lamp light flickering, but for now, can I get some criticism?

with lamp light

without lamp light

[Phlakes]

You need to go bolder with the lighting. The road is way too bright overall for a night scene and the streetlights are barely noticable.

[I_am_secretly_a_cat]

Ah yes, thanks. This is the sort of silly stuff that I dont see - and why I ask for [C+C] thanks a lot for your help!


If anyone's interested here is it somewhat finished although it didn't really produce how I would have liked it to:

[Decroded]

Ok well I got a bit carried away with an edit...

The stuff in front of the car is supposed to be broken glass, not texture.
There's also a couple of bullet casings on the ground but I think they need their own colour to be recognizable.

Here's a comparison for "stronger lighting" amongst other things:

A few key points here:

• You have a stack of colours that are VERY close to each other that you really need to reduce them (just the ones that can hardly see the difference. Set image to index mode or however you want to inspect your palette. You can add a black strip to the side of the image of find a space and draw the palette in 2x2px blocks if it helps.
• Try not to put subject matter direction in the middle vertically, so I moved it off and adjusted the horizon so we're more at eye level of an observer instead of a guy on a small ladder.
• Your lighting is what we call volumetric. This suggests there is particles in the air such as dust or most commonly moisture in the air. Such lighting would mean the background will fade more into they "grey" (a hue that looks good, not plain grey). This doesn't mean you can't have subtle volumetric lighting but I hope you can see from my edit it is not your only option.
• Used lighting to isolate points of interest.
• Zombie shirt is warm colour to make him stand out
• I just couldn't operate with that dude's wacky anatomy so tried to blend it into a style I'm more comfortable with.
• Dunno what the story is with the bike so I just moved it somewhere that helped with the balance and forgot about it. In my edit the second street lamp is still too high for perspective, forgot to fix. Car's front wheel looks a bit small too 

I started editing colours but its too late to continue...

Maybe all the green hue is washing out the zombie a bit, maybe it adds to the feel I dunno.
Either way, work on the palette and try to make some interesting ramps rather than so close to grey and white.
Again, you have too many colours that are close to each other so fix that too...


You could turn this into a really great animation loop if your interested in pushing it.

[I_am_secretly_a_cat]

Wow. Very insightful advice!

Really like what you did with it, improved stuff like the zombie's shirt which I wouldn't have been able to see and will be looking out for in my next piece.

I also understand stuff that wasn't working - It'll be much easier trying out new colours and lighting styles in my next piece thanks to your clear advice!
I'll have a lot to think about the colours, thanks for the tips on that

Again, thanks for your efforts and great criticism!

[Decroded]

Your welcome.
I had fun doing it and was good practice as I've never done this kind of lighting before either really.

Here's a rough idea of how you could use the flickering light in animation:


By experimenting with timing and recycling frames you can make a longer and more visually effective animation with alot less work while keeping the file size down at the same time.

I'm imagining a loop where the dude is checking over the car for zombie every so often to keep the tension, then when he sees it he takes cover, checks his weapon, then takes a shot which slows it down but it keeps coming until it gets one in the head, then it falls onto the conveniently placed pile of other dead zombies, he takes cover, maybe reloads, then the loops starts again.