[C+C] Sunken Ruins

[zoekmath]

Hey guys! As promised, I bring you the new drawing.



This one takes place in some ruins on a beach. A peasant is forced to hide on some ruins because of the attack of a dragon.
The dragon stands on top of him, so he can't escape.

My main problem with this is the sky; I need suggestions for it.

I used low saturation, as I think it looks better that way.

Please, if you have any suggestions, let me know.

[spO_oks]

Hi! The idea behind the piece sounds cool, but I think it's running into some of the same troubles as the last one. Everything feels like it has the same sort of texture to it, and the image comes off a bit flat.
The dragon, to me, comes across as a decorative piece on top of the ruins, not a real life dragon that is trying to attack the guy underneath.  The guy also looks like he's just sat down having a rest, he doesn't look like he's scared or hiding.  Hope that helps a little! Keep up the good work

[zoekmath]

Thanks for the answer. He doesn't seem like he's scared because it's supposed to be a long time past. The dragon is waiting for him to leave so he isn't attacking him actually; as he doesn't fit inside the ruin.
About the image being flat, how could I do it better?

[spO_oks]

Ah ok, with the current scale of things the ruins don't look like a safe hiding spot, the dragon could definitely have a good go at getting him there.

I think you need to add some darker and lighter shades to your colours all around, this will help make the image feel more dynamic.

[wzl]

Hey,
ok so, one thing that stands out is your canvas size. theres a lot of space that doesnt help selling your concept. try to focus more on whats going on and less on the surrounding. focus on the dragon, the building and the guy inside.

the lack of depths is partly due to the rockformation being so uniform, both in scale and shading. vary it up a bit and figure out where the lights coming from, what shadows the rocks will cast.

the clear sky is no problem. making gradients in pixelart is hard to get right. nothing wrong with monocolors.

overall there is a lack of contrast though. play around with the HSV sliders a bit, start experimenting. youre mainly using linear ramps. try to hue shift them to give your image a more interesting mood

the dragon itself doesnt seem very menacing and as spooks mentioned the hiding spot is not very hiding. the dragon could easily snag him like that. It's hard to tell the idea you had in mind.

[zoekmath]

You've been very helpful, but I think that I can't recreate so many suggestions into the same image. (this happened to me twice xD)
Maybe I focused too much in doing landscape. I'll try focusing on what's important now.

[MysteryMeat]

try anyways, much of how you learn art is by trying things you cant do in spite of it. you might trip up, that's ok. the attempt is what's important.

[zoekmath]

Well, I'll give it a try.

[HarveyDentMustDie]

Hi, like others said (in this tread as well as in previous one) you insist on telling story but in your drawings there is no one at first sight. In your new drawing character looks like he is resting and almost reading a book by the beach. Because dragon is dark on dark brown cliffs I didn't even noticed him at first before reading your story.

wzl made nice step forward and made elements read better and better suggest what's going on. As you've said in one of the latest messages don't focus too much on landscape (but again you don't need to sacrifice it). You need to choose what's the important for you, and if it's a story then think about how to tell it trough images.

I've prepared small sketch to show you one of the options. Of course this can be pushed even further with moving point of view even lower and showing some of the ceiling. But I think this will give you the taste of different directions you can go, and leave what don't work for specific task.

Hope it helps.

[skittlefuck]

Harevydent is on the right track with his edit. I think you should experiment with something other than a very top-down perspective that you are currently using.

While the dragon, ruins, and person hiding are supposed to be the main subject of the piece, the big opening to the ocean on the right side of the canvas is very distracting -the subjects of the piece are too out of focus. I don't mean to sound rude saying this, but I think a fair analogy of your piece is that it looks similar to a cave painting in the sense that while it is telling a story of sorts, the composition is lacking and makes it not as interesting as it could be.

I would really suggest you also watching these 3 part, 5 min videos that give a very brief insight into how composition and telling a story with a piece works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1McYZX6KScg Reading about composition and studying other works will take you a long way, would recommend you take the time to search around for some articles/tutorials!