AuthorTopic: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait  (Read 4199 times)

Offline MadSheep

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[WIP][CC] Woman portrait

on: November 22, 2017, 11:21:38 pm
Currently I'm working on a portrait view for my character. The hair looks really bad, I know :( I desperately need any advice here, please.. Am I on the right way at least?  ???

Offline MadSheep

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #1 on: November 23, 2017, 03:12:55 am
So, I realized that her neck was too long. And also decided to put on headphones  :)

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #2 on: November 23, 2017, 04:50:54 am
A few suggestions, mostly regarding the colours:

I added hue-shifting to everything, which adds more life. Shading with a darker version of the same hue tends to give a boring, washed out look. Changing the hue also adds a little more contrast, which I think is good for this piece.
I changed the shape of the headphones to look a bit more like they're resting against her head. I probably didn't rotate them enough, they still look like they're not quite touching the far part of her ear. This is almost a front-view, so we shouldn't be seeing much of the sides of the headphones like this.
I moved her chin forward, it was very far back.

With the hair, hue-shifting gave it some contrast, and I simplified things a bit. Don't be afraid to leave some parts entirely in shadow, or to not have highlights. You should only have highlights where a lot of light would hit the hair, that's why they're called high-lights. Using them sparingly also makes it easier to give the head and hair some volume/3Dness.

Edit: Also, moved the highlights in her eyes to the right side, to match the lighting everywhere else in the image.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 04:54:12 am by eishiya »

Offline IIRawsomeII

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #3 on: November 23, 2017, 05:27:24 am
Currently your T-Shirt looks like it’s part of her body. Perhaps you could put that ring around the neck part of the T-Shirt. You could see what I’m talking about here:https://www.fotoagent.dk/single_picture/12280/138/mega/id_0510_001_front_d.jpg

Offline MadSheep

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #4 on: November 23, 2017, 05:57:33 am
Oh my, eishiya, your works always make me cry  :'( That's so cool, thank you! I have never thought about hue-shifting for shading/lighting (probably I just should have read some theory about colors long ago :lol: ). I'll make all the changes a bit later, just wanted to thank you for your valuable advice right away :)

IIRawsomeII, yeah, you are absolutely right, I need to think more about the t-shirt :o

Offline MadSheep

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #5 on: November 23, 2017, 07:16:50 am
A few suggestions, mostly regarding the colours:

I added hue-shifting to everything, which adds more life. Shading with a darker version of the same hue tends to give a boring, washed out look. Changing the hue also adds a little more contrast, which I think is good for this piece.
I changed the shape of the headphones to look a bit more like they're resting against her head. I probably didn't rotate them enough, they still look like they're not quite touching the far part of her ear. This is almost a front-view, so we shouldn't be seeing much of the sides of the headphones like this.
I moved her chin forward, it was very far back.

With the hair, hue-shifting gave it some contrast, and I simplified things a bit. Don't be afraid to leave some parts entirely in shadow, or to not have highlights. You should only have highlights where a lot of light would hit the hair, that's why they're called high-lights. Using them sparingly also makes it easier to give the head and hair some volume/3Dness.

Edit: Also, moved the highlights in her eyes to the right side, to match the lighting everywhere else in the image.

Well, that's what I have now, tried to rotate the headphones even more.

P.S. Look, she's smiling - now she likes how she looks ;D (or probably it's just her favorite track playing  :crazy: )

Offline eishiya

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #6 on: November 23, 2017, 04:01:55 pm
Your colour choices ended up very similar to mine - that's fine if that's what you want, but experiment with higher/lower contrast in value and hue, perhaps there's a look you'll like more. Remember that you can also shift the hues in different directions. I shifted my lights towards yellow and shadows towards blue, which is very common, especially if you want to give the feeling of being outside on a sunny day (sunny highlights, sky-blue ambient light filling the shadows), but that's hardly the only good lighting situation around.

The shirt collar looks good. In my edit I tweaked the collar shape a little to make the shirt look more like it's resting on a turned body, I recommend also trying that - not by copying my edit, but by looking at references (including the way shirt collars rest on your own body!) and applying that.

Her collarbones are too high up - something I didn't try to fix in my edit. If you struggle with them, you could safely leave them out - in a relaxed pose like this, they're not very prominent on most people. If you want to rise to the challenge, there should be plenty of reference online if you look up "collar bones". They connect to the shoulders, but they slope down, so near the middle they're noticeably lower than the shoulders. Yours are drawn higher than the shoulders.
If you move/remove the collarbones, you may find your next shadow looks strangely flat. You could suggest a bit more of the neck anatomy just with minor changes to the shadow/light boundary. There's no need to go very detailed with the neck anatomy, unless you want her to look sinewy.

Her headphone band looks very voluminous and round because it has a pixel of shadow, a pixel of midtone, and a pixel of highlight. Most headphone straps are flat, which means one colour (the colour of the top surface of the band) will dominate. You might not even have room for the others, and that's fine. You may be able to fit one colour as the shadow, and you can use the shadow it casts on the hair to give it volume without making it look round.

There are some areas with noticeable banding, such as where her skin-shadow lines up with the hair, on the headphone strap, and in the top left portion of her hair (the latter was in my edit too).
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 04:04:40 pm by eishiya »

Offline IIRawsomeII

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #7 on: November 23, 2017, 04:29:57 pm
Her right side of her face looks jagged. Maybe some anti-aliasing would help.

Offline Super17

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #8 on: November 23, 2017, 09:38:34 pm
I'm not a guy of many words, so here is a quick edit:


Overall more colors, more contrast, more shadows.

Offline MadSheep

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Re: [WIP][CC] Woman portrait

Reply #9 on: November 23, 2017, 10:18:11 pm
Changed colors a bit, changed the neck shadows and tried to add more details to it (but failed imho  :( )
Flattened the headphones band, got rid of banding in some places. Still don't get how to make the t-shirt look more natural but for now I think that's ok with me  ::)


Super17, Wow, I'm afraid I'm not on that level yet but thanks for your time, she's super cool!