pillow phoenix

[politopo]

Edit: no animation since imageshack want me to pay




Hello everybody, it'a lot of time I do not post something original..
so, here we have this  phoenix head-spahed umbrella handle, with the reference image on the side



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it's still a wip, anyway, before I finish, do you think it is pillow shaded? (or "do you see any other major faults?", by the way..)
thanks  

[Cesque]

There are some traces of pillow shading, but it looks generally good, I think. A bigger problem is that the shading looks a bit artificial, i.e. I can't exactly tell where the light is coming from or what direction is the head of the handle extending in (is the phoenix's head in one line directly above the the rest of the handle?) The part where the phoenix meets the "staff" is also a bit dodgy.

Also, I think the top of the phoenix's neck could be a bit wider to make it more round. Here's a very rough copy/paste edit just as an example (pay no attention to the details):

[pistachio]

Actually there are a lot of traces of pillow shading, along with a lot of dark colors mixed into lighter ones. to pronounce each feather, which is blended into lights with a good deal of aforementioned pillow shading. The same method appears to be applied to basically every feather, while not paying much attention to the way the piece as a whole would be lit.

I assume you're suggesting bronze/brass or something along those lines, in which case it doesn't seem very metallic. The darks are pretty much black and very pronounced, especially compared to the rest of the cane, but the lights only reach up to midtones. There's a lot of flat color in places as well.

The large scale of the piece and attention to detail devoted to the phoenix focuses most, if not all attention to it. The rest of the cane is left in the dust and is generally bland but I think its palette works out well, but isn't very complementary to the phoenix. It's almost as if they were two separate pieces by different people spliced together. One, the cane and phoenix are separated by an outline, and the value and palette issues I mentioned earlier both contribute.

The cane as a whole matching up color schemes might help.

Edit coming soon maybe.

[politopo]

Thank you both for the comment, the work is not finished yet, so that's why the cane in rather poor in details...
The material of the head should be mahogany (red-ish wood, used for carving).

Cesque, you are right about the neck and about the fusion of the two pieces (the handle and the cane), as Pistachio says, it's not only a palette issue, but aso a matter of detail level

You are also right about the inconsistent lighting of the two pieces, which is hurting more than the pillowing, imho..

thank you again for the comments, will post the update soon

edit: now with animation!!!
edit:edit: not actually...