Megamind Baby

[Zizka]

Hey guys, it’s me again!

So this once again is for a contest. I’m limited to 15 colours and a canvas of 150 x 150. The theme is childhood and I chose to reproduce the baby in the animation picture Megamind.

This is my reference:


And this is where I’m at right now. I’ve also included an animated gif of my work process.


As usual, I will put into practice your advices and suggestions as I’ve done before. I’d really like for this to be my best work!
Thank you for reading!
Z.

[Zizka]

Bump, I'd really like some input on this please. The contest ends soon and I'd like to improve it before submission. 

Thank you!

[Parkerbaby]

I think you should just do a lot of measuring. I messed with it for a few minutes and got to this stage. And it still isn't there.

[Mathias]

Why the awkward reference still?

With it so scaled down, having the glass sphere fish thing positioned in front of him seems ill-placed. Can you remove it so all focus can just go to the baby? Or draw the sphere over to his side.

Eyes needs to be bigger.

[Zizka]

@Mathias:

It's an awkward reference ? I don't understand why that is. I mean, what makes a good reference then ? I don't understand, sorry.  I take my references from movies (stillshots).

Good point about the sphere. I just feel it brings something extra to the picture! I'll also make the eyes bigger.

@Parkerbaby:

Thank you, I've saved your edit and will refine the shape of the head some more.

[Decroded]

good reference from top of google images...


technical things aside, basically in this he is posing for the camera.
ur reference looks like a capture from something moving as part of a scene, not something intended to be viewed still for long.

consider other things like the lighting is much more useful in this reference, where as your reference has front-on lighting which is pretty useless.

[Zizka]

Thanks Decroded, I just saw your picture just now and your message. Sorry it took so long to reply, I honestly didn't see it. The reason why I saw it is because I wanted to update this piece. Next time around, I'll think I'll post my reference first and get some input for it before actually starting on the wrong bases. I like your picture, if I had seen it before, I would have picked it.

So I finally took the time to work on this some more, after scrutinizing both the edit (by parkerbaby) and the reference picture.

Here are the changes I made:

1. Played around with some colours for the face.
2. Made the eyes bigger, as was suggested last time.
3. Made the head shorter and narrower.
4. Made the mouth larger.
5. Made the arms shorter and thinner.
6. Changed the shape and the color of the feet.
7. Changed the shape of the lightning bolt.
8. Reshaped the crystal ball.
9. Resized and modified the fish.
10. Moved the eyebrows
11. Fixed the hands
12. Other minor tweaks.

Here's the result:


And the progress so far:


So, I would appreciate if I could be pointed in the right direction from here. I think the last edit is a great improvement over the 4th (previous) version so I believe I’m going in the right direction. As usual, I’m open to criticism and new suggestions and will put them in application to the best of my abilities.

[Zizka]

Bump (it's been more than a month, I hope that's ok).

Could I have more criticism on this please?

[jams0988]

Bump (it's been more than a month, I hope that's ok).

Could I have more criticism on this please?

....Have you worked on it in the past month? Or anything else? There's not much to critique...it looks pretty much like the original picture, but the artwork in the original picture isn't especially good or interesting.
I'd just start something else, if I were you. Three hours of intense sketching will help you more than ten posts about this baby drawing will. The reference is too simple and anatomically wrong to teach you much, in my opinion.

[Decroded]

I still think its just a bit boring over all, especially the singular, front-on light source.
Eyes could be slightly bigger to make him "cuter".

You could experiment with a few different poses instead of literally copying a reference that feels uninspiring to me.
You could consider some more interesting compositions with movie reference elements.