WHAWT, 'stachio!? Whar's my nutcracker . . .Helllooooooooooooooooooo0, st0ven!
Another unexpected edit bombshell! A hundred
gratitudes, friend!
You guys don't know how helpful and enlightening these superior edits are. Or . . . maybe you do, hehe. Both you guys created such a nice female face, so thankful for that. I needed her to have exceptional beauty; a trait of the actual char depicted.
I try hard to soak in and discern the reasoning behind each creative decision reflected in the edits, in this thread. And I think I understand them very well. It's just that that doesn't do a whole lot to bridge the gap in skills -
mine < YOURSBut learning is occurring. That's all I can ask for. A lot of learning during this project actually.
Love those cloth folds, st0venius. And yeah, I do love how Chris created nice flowing implied lines with his drapery, that aid in keeping the focus. I have a great fondness for design principles, and they're importance, but often, out of being overwhelmed I'll either forget or disregard them. Goal of course is to make them second nature; you don't even think you just do them.
Nice right arm (our left) edit. My hands look a little awkward and you fixed them without even editing the hands themselves! Checked my ref for the hands, turns out I deviated from how the wrist is positioned, your edit is way more like the ref, and you haven't even seen it . . . yeesh.
Love how your edit takes a different stylistic path than Chris's. Yours gives off more of a playful clay-modeled illustrationy vibe with it's chisely facial features and cloth folds, which is actually more the route I originally wanted to go, since the book is to be a detective story, aimed at teens. Like Nancy Drew type stuff. Yes, I'm drawing the story's detective heroine.
Well, anyway GO UPDATE: (
+ official st0ven-mandated luminosity map)

-Hair still ultra WIP (can't hold off any longer on it! dreading . . .)
-BG modified searching for a good bg color scheme, etc. Will be totally replaced.
-Outer glowy edge halo makes it look too moon-lit, wanted more of a dawn look.
-Too voluptuous? Trying to be modest here . . .
-Everything a bit dark.
-Too blue and midnighty. Luckily it's a series of layers creating the coloring/lighting in this version . . .
surprise.

(time to put a bullet in this thing . . . today,
hopefully . . .)