Mountain Scene ~ Hard crit wanted

[heyy13]

This is a scene i completed some months ago and has allready been sent off to the person who commisioned it from me.

It however has been bothering me since. I stumbled across this forum today and have been reading the critism given to by many of the pixelists here. It seems increadibly usefull and i would like some insite into what i could be doing better as this is one peice i want to improve.

I will be editing this peice and reposting as your crit comes in, this is a learning curve for me so don't think the work you put into replies wont be apreciated. Keep in mind there is nothing in the subject matter of this picture i have ever done before. Excluding the sunsety sky. which i realise needs alot more work. *is the first thing she's changing*

Program used: 100% MS Paint, converted to .gif format by Adobe Photoshop 5.0 Limited Edition. (Limited ed is just code for crap bye and bye.)

[fil_razorback]

Hello and welcome on board ^^

I quite like the scene but I can see two main flaws :

1-Tweed rocks : Especially in the left part of the image, the mountains are thin and they look a lot more like curtains rather than mountains. You should represent them in perspective and not only one of its face
2-Smoothness : I think you overdithered some parts of the image; dithering sorta killed hard shapes, for example on the big rock on the right.


Keep in mind that i'm not a great artist so I may be saying crap but anyway, keep it up =)

[heyy13]

Thanks for the comment fil_razorback. Once i get afew more comments i'll post the first edit. The two things you brought to my attention were things i hadn't even thought about. Do you have any idea what i could do to fix them tho? Especially the "tweed rocks" how do i even fix that? I'd never attempted rocks/a mountain before this image so i was working blindly. Thankyou for your sugestions. : D

[Malor]

Well, to fix the "tweed rocks" you could put more detail into the rock face, cracks, individual rocks, different angles,,look at a rock face from google, and try to mimic that.

[heyy13]

Problem with that is that they are seen from a distance, thus it would be verry dificult to see anything like that. I tried real referances when i was pixeling, or else i would not have gotten to where i was. But yeah i can see how things like bigs cracks in the rockface would be noticeable. I will give it a try. Thankyou.

[philipptr]

Imo one problem is that the shading is much too soft. It seems more like silk than rock to me. Especially the nearer rocks could use some abrupt shading changes.

[eck]

highlights on edges to make em pop. 
individual rock faces would do this piece good.
the sky needs some beter colors.
CONTRAST CONTRAST CONTRAST.
everything needs aa.
the water needs  bright highlight to make it pop.
the sand at the botem needs to be less dithered and less symetrical.
HUE SHIFT.
some of your outlines are badly done, some are non existant.  try to stay consistand on whichever you decide to go with.


welcome to pixelation (H)

[madartiststan]

Welcome to the forums man!

First, I'd like to say you seem really talented ( far more than me I might add  ). So if anything I say doesn't really bother you, just ignore me. This is just my opinion.

I'd really like to focus on what fil was focusing on, about the curtain like parts of the rock on the left side of the mountain face. It would do you well to make more defineable faces on the cliff as well. Plus, some details and cracks and such like that also will work wonders for you.

Dithering:
Dithering is one of my more favorite forms of shading things and can be one of the most effective in some places and others for texturing on a piece. But it seems to be overdone on this piece and made things seem smooth in some places they shouldn't. Adarias has some really nice rock references, I'll link them to you when I find them.

Overall, this was an excellent piece my friend.

[heyy13]

Thankyou everyone so much for the welcomes and advice! It's nice to be here.

It seems the biggest problem i have is with the rocks looking flat, as everyone has pretty much made that their main point. Also everyone except eck who seems to think i havn't dithered enough tells me its to much, so i'll try to tone that down abit on the rocks to in my next draft. I think i'll wait on those referances from madartiststan before trying again tho. (If i can impinge on your time alittle since you make them sound fantastic.)

On another note i was wondering if anyone can point out a good way to do realistic clouds. I allways avoid them as i can never seem to do them right but i'm thinking of scrapping the sky alltogeather and redoing it. Whilst i'm at it i may aswell learn another new skill.

[madartiststan]

Morning boyo!

Here's a thread of some of my crap, towards the bottom you'll notice I start working on a rock. Right after the first overdithered version you shall find Adarias several different references, and even a godly edit on my piece from helm!

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=3994.0


As for the clouds, just massive dither like you attempted to do on the rocks. <- That was more or less a joke due to my quite terrible physical pain keeping me from giving you and honest and thought out answer. Will be back later.