[WIP] Octopus

[Chrispy]

I'm not sure what you mean by the murky haze element, Mathias XP

[Mathias]

Oh I just meant try to depict some good ol' volumetric haze/fog. It really looks like the scene is on land or in outer space. If you gave the angler fish's flashlight a diffusing radius of light it could help.

[st0ven]

Sorry that this is pretty sloppy. It would appear that i dont have much skill in the pixel arena these days and ive done this pretty quickly as i have other stuff that im working on currently.

I would say that your biggest concern would be focusing more on how the light source from the angler fish will represent the volumes of the octopus. right now it looks a little flat. Remember that in deep water, its almost pitch black so any bight light source is going to hit your objects surrounding it with a good bit of contrast if it is close by. Think of the head as a sphere and the tentacles as tubes to help you figure out how to shade them to give them the proper volume. Worry about your specular lighting effects once you have the volume figured out better.

Ive noticed you updated the water bg with a nice little cave entrance out into shallow water which i think will help your composition out a lot. the same rules will still apply, but now the light source will be coming from the cave entrance and not the angler fish.

[Chrispy]

I really appreciate that edit, much better than my own work up to now. The way you made this look really helped me to keep pushing forward on this.

[Jad]

Maybe you could work on bringing back the deep-water-blue feeling of the colors? I really enjoyed them! The rendering is super awesome right now.

[st0ven]

looking much better IMO. in fact really nice! the only thing left id say is that you could be adding some really subtle light hits on some surrounding sea floor objects around the pair so that you get a better sense of its environment.  tbh anything that lights up that much of the octopus is going to be dispersing far enough to give some clarity to his surroundings, even if they are faint/vague.

[Mathias]

If going for that murky murk effect, you'll want more of a color cast - a bias towards a certain hue. Angler fish only hang out in deep depths, so I think a deep sea abyss vibe would make sense, maybe enhance your scene a lttle. Sure everyone wants impactive/poignant hue shifts going on, but they're not always appropriate.

This is what I mean

All dark and cold!
YOU SILL DONE BEEN ST0VENIZED! JAD I LOVE YOU!

[Chrispy]

I dunno, I kinda grew fond of the brown. But I agree it does need a bit more blue, cold goodness.

[Mathias]

Yeah, good compromise then. I like that change, good job. Still got a nice shift in there. Now add a whale shark.

[Decroded]

I dunno, I kinda grew fond of the brown. But I agree it does need a bit more blue, cold goodness.

That looks really cool :-)
Giving it a murky feel is a good idea, capturing that volumetric lighting feel.