Kagari Atsuko - Little Witch Academia

[EduardoPras]

Hey guys, another one of those I've been doing.

I really liked Little Witch Academia, lately I haven't enjoyed anime much in those last years. But this one was pretty nice.

I've tried to give more movement to this one.
Also, I tried really hard to give more volume to it.

Things I like about it:
-Her Hand and her left foot.
-The pose, I used every rule I know to try to keep it alive.
-I also like her expression, seems like a scene that could happen in the animation.

Things I dislike about it:
-I am not sure I should highlight her clothes.(It is not really that shiny)
-Her hair is kind of bland.
-The color as always. No clue about choosing colors. Just Hue shifted them based on the ref.(Except the reds on her clothing, I like those)



Well, as always if you guys find some way I can fix it give me a shout.

[astraldata]

The outline pops the volume a bit too much, and then with the highlights, it just makes her look like a wet bubble/plastic toy person.

You said you hue-shifted, but you need to give MORE toward some particular color and try some different varieties in hues if you want to push it further. Colors are meant to be played with, so do it. You'll be proud of yourself when you find just the right shades for your highlights and your shadows.

In this particular piece, I'd say bring the *brightness/specularity* down on her highlights, to a luminosity closer to her midrange color (or use the midrange color as AA to the highlight color OR remove one or the other color altogether, though the former is nicer-looking than the latter, depending on whether you're going for 16 or 8 bit respectively).

She needs some color in the brightest highlight of her hair -- i.e. if she's standing in the sun, move that a LOT more toward yellow on the hue spectrum (but don't make it the color of a lemon of course). Also the staff's yellow could use a lot more saturation to meet up with the saturation of the clothing.

Hope this helps.

Her hand is above her head, but there are no shadows casting anywhere from her arm, so you might want to address that.

[EduardoPras]

Hello Astral.

Thanks for taking the time to make a critique.

You've made me notice that I was not doing a thing I usually do in ilustrations.
I was not checking my values in grayscale.

I've changed some things in the corrections:
-Tried to push volume further, using a greater range of value.
-Tried making bolder color shifts, but I will have to experiment further to see more possibilities I can get away with.
-Tried to Make the scepter read as greyish while using blues instad of greys.
-Changed outline from pure 100% Black to a blue pretty dark tone.
-Hand now casts shadow on the top of her head.

Couldn't find a good solution for the hair yet. Tried to look how other artists represent hair but still need to think a bit.

Anyway, let me show you my follow up:



Thanks again for the tips they were very helpful.

[astraldata]

No problem man. Glad I could help! -- Everything looks loads better now!

The only things I see in the update that are still a bit off include the highlight on the shirt/dress and the shadow on the hair.

First, the biggest problem with the highlight on the shirt is that it's misplaced and misused. It seems to be both a backlight/rimlight *and* a light used to define form in the foreground (i.e. the arm over the head's bicept).

To address, really, both issues, you need to understand that it's okay to leave highlight speculars out where the area would be in shadow, and don't add a darker color just to call it a "shadow" because shadow is simply the absence of light! You always have bounced/ambient light, which is what the midtone in this case would address with its use alone. You'd only add highlight to areas where the planes on the form pointed most directly *toward* the light direction.

There's two ways you could handle the purple highlight with the kind of detail you have now -- as stated before, you could use it as your main color and use the midtone as your AA (though the main highlight would have to be dialed back and pushed a little more toward yellow), or you could place it on areas where there are no shadows at all to further define the planes a little better.

Oh, and the next to darkest purple you have should be made a little darker (or removed entirely) because it seems like it's only there to get in the way of the main shadow color as it is now (the hue of it is okay though! -- you could consider pushing the brightest highlight hue of the purple even more toward yellow or some other color to help the image pop a bit more!)

That's about all I've got atm. I hope that helps!

[EduardoPras]

(Sent before text was complete, will write later and edit)