AuthorTopic: Detective  (Read 2235 times)

Offline alex pang

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Detective

on: November 02, 2011, 05:33:33 pm
Sup I need some critique on the colors and maybe a bit on the anatomy:



 :crazy:

Offline Tourist

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Re: Detective

Reply #1 on: November 05, 2011, 04:33:01 pm
Eh, I'll give it a shot.

The artwork looks familiar.  Harry Dresden reference maybe?

Get rid of the dithering on the coat.  I've seen three uses for dithering:

1) Blending.  Increasing the apparent number of colors without increasing the actual color count.  This works best if the colors being blended are lower in contrast to each other than they are to other colors in the image.

2) Texture.  Suggesting a rough textured surface or a quality of the light (haze).  This seems to work best if the dither pattern is noticeable, but does not cover the entire surface.

I think blending and texture have opposite intents, blending is best when invisible, textures are best when noticeable.

3) Desaturated pop.  If your colors are desaturated but you want to add visual pop, you can dither them with a color of similar lightness but very different hue (like red-green).  This increases the contrast but keeps the actual saturation low.  Helm did this in one of the video tutorials with a robot, dithering green-purple instead of using flat gray for the metal portions.

I don't think the leather coat is a good candidate for any of these three.  you are using a change in value (light-dark) to define form.  Dithering to blend smudges this and you lost the form.  Leather isn't a particularly rough texture, so no need to dither for texture.  And it's all mono-hue and fairly saturated to begin with, so no need to try a desaturated pop.

Other things
You might want to rework the face a bit.  A little too much noise I think.

I have no suggestions on improving the anatomy or background.  They're ok, or at least beyond my skill to offer good critique.

Tourist

Offline alex pang

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Re: Detective

Reply #2 on: November 05, 2011, 05:38:18 pm
Here is a little edit:


Btw: No referrence, and i should have said this earlier but the background was just for testing how he blends with environment.