Help with Non Metallic Shading

[Joe]

Hold up. Night's example is the bronziest in the thread by far, you shouldn't just brush it off like that. First the colors can easily be tweaked to a higher key. Second, he outlined a process resulting in a balanced sprite.
The biggest issue with your sprite right now is its focus on the parts (delineating every single muscle) rather than the whole, resulting in a busy sprite. Everything is lit uniformly and there's no sense of priority.
Another suggestion is to draw the legs without the loincloth and then paint it on, because it doesn't seem like they're attaching as strongly as other legs in the thread, like the top half is teetering. I would either thicken the obliques or the abductors, or both.
Hope that helps, your sprite's coming along quite nicely.

And yea the other thing I like about Conceit's that he didn't mention is it's looming, hunched over, like a giant would be doing.

[Conzeit]

Gil: thanks! I know rosier wants to learn but sometimes gets overwhelmed so I wanted to do somthing easy to get but still full of resources 

Joe: Knowing Rosier  I think he is not currently even considering doing bronze since it's one of his first takes at shading...he listens to crits but only so far
I felt my post was needed because although Night's is lovely I dont really see a lot of people being able to animate something like that, specially not Rosier that's starting out on shading, but his shades and sense of contrast could totally be applied by Rosier.Thanks for the hunching over thing....it just felt right you know ? :p

[Night]

Night's example is the bronziest in the thread by far

Night's is lovely

 

Didn't realise the sprite's supposed to be animated, my bad - it is kind of a bit too much for animation I agree. However the process of creation can still be applied (I sense that my post was just a tad too overwhelming for Rosier).

[Rosier]

TBH, I have no intention of animating something this complicated for a while.  There's a reason all my animations at the moment are all one shade.  Not to mention finding examples might be a tad bit harder than a human...



Anyway, I wound up with this.  It's kind of a mix of both Night's and Conceit's, though Night's is mostly the shading in certain parts.  I also kept the brighter bronze in addition, cause I do still like it, though straight fire rather than this ambientness(?) does make it harder to read.  I tried for a red-orange-yellow gradient spreading out from the center, but this was a lot cleaner.


Got rid of the furnaces having doors that opened, and just left it as constantly glowing.  And while not quite Tron lines, the shoulders, wrists and heels are now open to exposing the fire, and the ribcage area is visibly hollow and also spewing fire.  If the fire were to go out, it would be visible that this is a hollow statue with several places open.

[pistachio]

Damn, that's a major step up from where this started. Challenging yourself to stick closer to our takes now, which were stylistically massively different from yours, is the way to do it.

But I see you took some visual elements from the latest and turned it into visual noise.
Here I want to see the noise cut down, I.E. simplify the furnaces and speculars.
Also more core shadows formed by plane changes. Conceit's did that, Night did that and I did that.

Here's an edit with some ideas from all 3.

[Rosier]

Smoke everywhere.

I kind of want the furnaces, at least the main ones, to make noise, considering that's Number 1 on the list next to being made of bronze.  Plus there has to be seven distinguishable ones on the chest.  I toned down the rest of the outlets, though, plus added more shadows, especially in the stomach region

[Night]

Everything feels too noisy at the moment, try using more... clusters, for a lack of a better, and AA. For the smoke keep it more uniform, and perhaps even add an element of fire.
Like this:


Something I forgot to mention in my critique post - the waist, and consequently the legs, feel way too narrow in my mind, almost like they couldn't support all the weight that they bear. I suppose you could excuse it with stylistic choice, but just thought I'd throw it out there.

[Friend]

his anatomy at present is not very menacing nor apt for much physical pursuits.

Try lengthening and beefing up the legs considerably.  They need to be strong and ferocious.  Google "chimera"

[Rosier]

Played with the clusters and smoke.   Smoke naturally only comes out of the ports, which is why there isn't a large clump on the back, as it's from either shoulder.

Otherwise beefed up the waist and legs.

[Joe]

It's come quite a ways, but you've lost the metal. There has to be some reflection going on somewhere if it's going to read as bronze.
Since there won't be any animation to separate the smoke, I'd also lighten it or darken the left horn to make it stand out.
Current furnace design is a great improvement.

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I've been meaning to do an edit on this for some time. The pose is weak, it looks like he's sulking. And the muscles are wanting. This is a god.
Throughout the thread what's bothered me is he doesn't look like he's about to lay shit down. People sacrifice their firstborn to this guy.
I think in building off other's edits you've neglected anatomy to the detriment of the piece.
I don't know if you have separate layers, but it would work best if you built up the anatomy and the bronze first. After that's made clear you can add the smoke etc.