U-boat Girl

[Seiseki]

So I'm trying something I've never done before..
I'm kinda happy with how it turned out, but there are some problematic areas..



I think the hair looks tentacle-ly, maybe if I ditched the heavy outlines?
The hair could probably flow a bit better, I think I just settled for something too quickly.

Also, she kinda looks like a giant with the ship in the background, I'm not sure how I can imply that the ship is further away.
I'm sure there are also a bunch of cluster and shading issues too..

Character Reference


Edit: Split ends to imply hair, better image size and spacing.



Edit2: Bunch of small tweaks, changed the palette..


Edit2: I gotta stop working on this... tweaked sky, changed palette so the water is more turquoise..

[Roach]

I kind of liked the colder colors of the first 2nd edit as opposed to brighter saturated turqoise. I feel like it made your bubbles and jellyfish pop out a bit more.

[Seiseki]

Yeah, I went a bit overboard..
The ship silhouette looks weird too, with that palette.

[DracoDragon42]

1. I think there is too much blue
2. Ship silhouette seems to blend in with scuba gear from a distance
3. The sky's color is too similar to the water, but I don't know what to do about that
4. You could add some distortion to the area below the water because water distorts things

[Seiseki]

1. Well the sky is blue and the ocean is mostly transparent and reflects the sky.. That's why I tried tinting the sea more greenish.
2. I tried toning down the silhouette which fixed this
3. Is it really? Even the over-the-top green one?
4. I'm not sure how I'd do that and still keep it clean.

[ErekT]

Arg, I tried an edit twice now and GIMP crashed on me both times

Anyways, the perspective looks off to me. In part I think because there's no rule of thirds in play. Horizontal line is too high, the girl is smack in the middle with the boat right on top, and the underwater transition from dark to light looks more like underwater dunes, which messes with the sense of perspective further. I'd enlarge the canvas somewhat, 250x250 or something? Then try to shift the girl to the left and the boat to the right or vice versa and bring the horizontal line down a bit.

Shading and colors are all very nice I think.

[Roach]

I'm going to have to completely disagree with with most of the points draco had made. Water distorts things true if you are looking at it above land, but for the view you are making it is perfectly fine and nothing should be distorted. If you've ever went scuba diving, and actually been deep within the ocean, shapes aren't distorted when you are actually in the water. (unless its really far away) I would suggest instead just making your sea floor fade away even more harshly and instead of distorting things, soften edges, but I don't really think that's even necessary. I think your blues were fine, and maybe you should honestly darken the U-boat silhouette. his third and first point literally makes no sense to me, the ocean is supposed to be blue, and so is the sky, they are both blue for the same reasons, so obviously the colors are supposed to be similar. I think you should take the colors of the U-boat silhouette from your very first image, and mix it in with your first 2nd edit.
Also you should still be able to see some of the color of the actual U-boat, so maybe think about adding some hints of details with it's colors there.

[Decroded]

Yeah, I went a bit overboard..

[Seiseki]

@ErekT, I tried roughly using vertical rules of third.. I'd like to keep the centered composition though..

The perspective is kinda wonky, I'm fine with it not being realistic, as long as it doesn't look bad.
I removed some of the gradient "dunes", I think it improved the overall look at lot, made it much cleaner too! 

@RoachThe Ship silhouette should be much better now.
The silhouette is not an u-boat btw, it's a IJN Destroyer. The girl is the u-boat, japanese antromorphism, yes it's confusing.. 

I started animating this and things just escalated.. I was just going to experiment with it "really quick"... 

 

I might  add an actual uboat silhouette passing by behind her. Since it's a bit uneventful.
It would have to be at a longer animation cycle though. I'd probably have to make the animation 6 times longer.

Oh and I'll have to animate the hair.. 

[Roach]

Wow dude it's looking great!  Also yeah I was going to say, it doesn't look like a U-boat but more of a destroyer, but I refrained because I didn't know if it was some kind of special U-boat.
You should try speeding up when the swordfish turns in the background and maybe even give it a little longer swim.

[Seiseki]

Whew, so back to this again..
I added bubbles and kinda simple looking waves.. there's some weirdness, but I'm not gonna try an fix it.

I'm working on the hair, but I think I need to make it more gradual, the movements should correspond with the body head up and down and not have a life of its own.

[Pusty]

This looks really amazing! Seems kinda slow motion tho'.

Edit:
Nerver mind my brower  just played it slow haha

[Seiseki]

Haha, when you first posted I was thinking, what does he mean? It's underwater so it's supposed to look a bit like slo-mo..

I don't really like how the torpedo highlights the low frame rate, but I can't really increase it at this point and I don't want the torpedo to go slower.

And I've decided I need to animate the clouds, it looks way too static otherwise..

[Friend]

maybe have the skirt lift up a bit revealing her panties 

[Seiseki]

maybe have the skirt lift up a bit revealing her panties 

Hahaha, noo! No fan service here!
It's like it was made for it though, the downwards motion, it certainly wouldn't be unrealistic.. 

I should probably make the skirt move a bit though..
Also, I don't even think she has panties, she has like a wet-suit, with a skirt sewed onto it.

[Ambivorous]

Hi Seiseki!

This looks really good. Sadly I only got around to editing this now.



I originally tried to animate the whole thing, but working without layers (and having to simulate them myself) was too much grunt work, so I decided to only edit the first frame to at least get some ideas across.
I edited your clouds, because I thought they were a little lacklustre. I'm not a cloud person though, so do take this with a pinch of salt.
I messed a bit with the lightsource on her suit, because really it looked like you just copy-flipped a lot of it and that's naughty!
Then I tackled the hair. I read something about struggling with it, so I focused mostly here. I've cut some of her hair (the bits that were crazy long compared to the rest); added some volume by adding a lot of bunched up, darker hair behind the front stuff; and critically I've added strands to her hair so it no longer looks like tentacles!

As far as animation goes, I was thinking of letting the boat rock up and down rather than just going up one pixel altogether and then down a few frames later (like a seesaw), move the clouds across the screen slowly and animate the hair in a more... jellyfish kind of way.

[Seiseki]

Those are really nice fluffy clouds.
I initially drew the clouds to hint at some curvature, then through iteration they just turned more and more fluffy..
I don't want to animated them changing shape, so I'll just draw them fluffy like your edit and move them across the screen, maybe I'll mess around to see if I can have them move down the horizon, or curved somehow.

Cutting some of the hair was a good idea, makes it more focused..
I think the "thin" lines for individual hair strands is a nice idea, but I'll probably do it more subtly. I feel like it adds too much detail.
The hair resting on her shoulders looks a bit like straps, kinda detracts from the shape of her puffy shoulders. I also don't want to mess around with that because I have the arms and hair on different layers and different frame animations.

For the light source, yeah it's definitely an area where I could improve..
Especially since I changed my mind back and forth from lightsource being top center and top left..

Also, I tried having the boat rock up and down by angling it along the waves, but I thought it looked messy, so I abandoned that idea.
It would probably have worked out if I had stuck with it.. Maybe I'll have another go at it..

[Finlal]

I really like the static picture, but animation troubles me.
Frame rate is too low and everything looks very jittery. But if you can't  change it, you probably should pay attention to hair and arms. I'd add more motion and amplitude to the arms movement (made a quick rough edit on one of the arms).

As for hair - they are static most of the time, and on frames 10-11 and 16-17 the fact that they are on another layer seem to obvious.
Also you might try giving torpedo a turn.
Nevertheless, I like what's going on right now. Would be interesting to see what will be in the final piece.