[WIP][CC] Elvish building overgrown with weeds

[Kich]

Hello everyone

I'm looking for some C&C for this piece:



To me it looks pretty sketchy and I'd still consider it a WIP, although the client was well satisfied with it as it is. The size specifics were big so it was all I managed to create with the client's budget. I know there's plenty of room for improvement and I'd love to put more work into this piece to improve my skills and make it look finished, so I'm proud of putting this at my portfolio pages. But I'm kinda stuck and everytime I open the image it feels like I've reached my utmost. How could I make this better? Please feel free to sketch over it if it proves necessary. Thank you!

[Chonky Pixel]

After a quick look there are a few areas that I think need attention:

1: Light and shadow. The light seems to be coming from above-left, given the shading on the towers. However, that means the two internal walls flanking the inner tower should be different shades.

2: The brightest shade on the cylinders is left-of-centre. However, the darkest shade is used on both extremes. I would have thought that the darkest shade on the left of the cylinders should be brighter than the darkest shade on the right, as it would be facing more towards the light.

3: Think about plant placement - are they in shadow or in light? Shade them appropriately.

4: The main entrance looks stuck-on. You could carve a curve out of the lintel to make it look like it was embedded in the wall. Also, you have some light available so you can project some of it into the doorway and expose a little of the floor material in there.

5: The tops of the windows on the sides of the outer towers use semicircles. This is incorrect as the shape of the tower and the viewing angle would distort the shape into a different curve. Currently they look unnatural.

6: Staying on the windows, think about which of the internal faces of the holes are pointing at the light and which are pointing away. Currently you've shaded them to all look the same, no matter which way the windows are pointing. You can probably cast some shadows on some of them as well.

There's more I could talk about, like the angles of the ellipses you're using to build the domes at the top of the towers, the way the wall seems to stop half way round the tower... Also, the tower texture could be re-thought-out. But I don't want to turn this into an essay. Hopefully this will help you get over your block and find something to work on.

Give me a shout if you want me to break down any of these points or give examples.

[Chonky Pixel]

Here I've drawn some guides based on the curve of the tower described by the roof above. As you can see, the bottoms of the windows should be curved to match. At the moment it looks like they're cut out of a flat surface, which doesn't look right.

The very tops of the arches of the windows should be touching the top line. This should help work out how the arches need to distort to wrap around that cylinder.



You have the lightsource coming from a bit to the left, but the darkest shade on your tower is both on the left and the right. In fact, you're going even darker on the left.

The second example I've added here gives you an alternative that makes more sense visually. It also gives more scope for using shade in the image later to differentiate different parts from each other.



In your image it looks like the door is standing proud of the building, which is visually confusing. See my top example, as seen from above. If you push it back to make it inset, the tower will describe a curve cutting through the lintel, as in the lower example I added. This would help the image make more sense.



As the lightsource is coming from the left, A should be darker than B.



Here, the flowers at B are in shadow, but also the same shade as those at A. The flowers at B should be darker.

Hopefully this is helpful. I'd love to see how you get on... If you're interested in improving this image further, let me know and I'll point out a few other areas to work on. If you want examples of the changes themselves, just ask.