AuthorTopic: Just a small starter piece  (Read 3819 times)

Offline Raivel

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Just a small starter piece

on: November 19, 2007, 01:17:55 am
Yeah... the title speaks for itself. I'm relatively new at this, soo.. xD

Anyway, heres the pictures. It's just a small tree on an iso patch of grass. Haha, laugh at my pathetic attempt to create grass. ;__;
I would love it if you C&C. I mean, seriously, go all brutal on me. I'm serious, I've never been critiqued before, and I'm not sure if I'm on the right track.
Also, this is my first time using AA, I'm wondering if the piece even need AA.

Offline griffy6

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Re: Just a small starter piece

Reply #1 on: November 19, 2007, 01:47:47 am
Let's have a look at your picture, shall we?

 - I don't know what you were trying to do when you added the gray outline.  If it's anti-aliasing, then you should probably take it out. AA is supposed to make the lines smoother.

 - The holes in the top of the tree can be removed too--they just make the tree look like a paper cut-out. Real trees don't have big gaps in them, just other branches.

 - Also, the grass looks seriously out of place. The tree itself has really bold tones in it and has a full black outline. On the other hand, this grass has very little contrast and uses pale colors. You might just want to take it out completely and have your picture be of a tree only.

Other than that, nice job. The treetop is nice and dithered to suggest leaves, the tree itself looks physically correct, and you didn't use too many colors. Not bad! Oh, and welcome to the forum. :)
 

Offline Anything!

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Re: Just a small starter piece

Reply #2 on: November 19, 2007, 02:28:15 am
Aww, no worries. Grass is really hard.



Here, I removed the grey-things. You don't need outer aa-ing, especially since there really wasn't going to be a point for the white background. I also removed the grass because I planned to help you refine the tree. :3

See, you have three colours in which you barely use, and you can remove them without losing any information. So with this second image, I removed them.



Normal greens... they're like, so five minutes ago. ;P So, to make things look more interesting, I changed the hues around a little.



Then, as mentioned before, you don't need those holes. So I filled them in and such.



I didn't do anything to the trunk because I'm afraid I'm not very good at doing trunks, so I don't want to say something is wrong without knowing all that much about it myself. Anyway, you can use as much as you want from what I told you, and welcome to the forums. :>

Offline Malor

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Re: Just a small starter piece

Reply #3 on: November 19, 2007, 03:04:51 am

 - The holes in the top of the tree can be removed too--they just make the tree look like a paper cut-out. Real trees don't have big gaps in them, just other branches.



Well.. actually, they do. Regardless I would do a little color reduction, and I would definitely follow Anything's advice and throw in a little hue shifting.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2007, 03:07:16 am by Malor »
Quote from: Adarias
I'm not going to pretend this is a small task either; certainly none of us here can claim to have accomplished it.  it's the realm of masters.  still, it's what we all have to try for.

Offline Faktablad

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Re: Just a small starter piece

Reply #4 on: November 19, 2007, 05:16:50 am
My advice is to put the tree more in perspective.  The branches, from our isometric overhead perspective, should theoretically cover more of the trunk than what we see now.  Right now we see more of the underside of the leaves than we should.  Also try and make the bottom of the trunk have a curved bottom, not a flat bottom.  That will help it appear to be growing out of the ground.

I think what would help your gaps (which, as Malor showed, are perfectly natural) not look like paper cut-outs would be to not have all of these gaps penetrate through the entire tree, front to back.  Remember that leaves on a tree don't just grow in one big fuzzball, they grow in "chunks" off of branches which branch off of the main trunk.  So there are defined layers to these leaf chunks.  Sometimes you can see through gaps in the leaves to other leaves, and sometimes you can see the through the gaps to environment behind the tree.  I think you need to indicate 3-dimensional leaf sections which have depth and texture, instead of the sort of blob thing you have going on now.

Offline Raivel

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Re: Just a small starter piece

Reply #5 on: November 20, 2007, 02:57:55 am
Ahha! Thanks so much for your criticism!  ;D

Anyways, I followed your advice griffy and removed the holes. xD
Anything!: I also took your advice and tried to make my tree more "fall based", with different color leaves then just green. xD

And yeah, Malor, haha, I think I did the opposite of a color reduction by changing the leaves. XDD Oh well, haha.
And Faktablad, I took your advice and made my trunk curvier at the bottom, and I realize my tree is a little out of the isometric perspective, but I'm not sure how to fix it, so I left it to do later. xDD

Anyway, heres my (improved?) tree!

Offline Faktablad

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Re: Just a small starter piece

Reply #6 on: November 20, 2007, 04:33:33 am
I made an edit to address certain points of your tree:


(1. and 2.)  As I mentioned before, the perspective of your original was misleading.  Your original tree appeared to be in two perspectives: if you cover up just the leafy portion, it looks as though we are above the tree, but if you cover up the grass, it looks as though the tree is growing over our heads.  As you can see in number 1, I edited your original tree to show the whole tree as viewed from underneath.  I left the leaves the way they were, but I put the lower half in the same perspective as the top half--now it looks as if the tree were floating in the air on a square patch of grass, and we were looking up at it.  You can see how now we can see everything from underneath. 

But in isometric perspective, everything that rests on the isometric plane should have the impression that it is being viewed from above.  So in number 2 I put everything in an overhead isometric perspective.  If we are floating above the tree, then our view of the upper trunk should be blocked by a portion of the leaves.  So I edited the leaves to cover up more of the trunk.

(3.)  I also noticed that the leaves were amassed into a single huge blob.  But if you think about trees, because every leaf is attached to a branch, the shape of the leaves is directed by the shape of the branches.  (You can see this in the reference pictures of trees that Malor posted).  Leaves don't just grow anywhere--they have to be attached to a branch.  So I drew in some lines that divided the blob of leaves into smaller sections that would follow the shape of branches beneath them. 

(4.)  I think the gaps you had in your first tree were a good idea because they added interest and made the leaves less of a single blob.  But the gaps you put in were weird because they allowed you to see through the entire tree at the very center of the leaf mass--the point where there usually are the most leaves.  I put many small gaps around the edges of the leaf mass.  It is easier to see through the edges because they are less dense than the rest of the leaf mass.  I also made some larger gaps near the trunk.  This is because the larger branches of a tree generally have less leaves than the smaller branches.  The heirarchy of branches goes like this: trunk->larger branches->smaller branches->twigs->leaves, so you can see why there would be less leaves growing close to the trunk and large branches. 

(5.) I removed the black outlines, because black is a color that in real life only occurs in areas of very deep shadow.  I replaced these outlines with the dark brown that was used in the tree trunk.  I also used a dark purple to indicate areas of shadow.  (A lot of shadows in the outdoors have a bluish tinge--this is because even though the shadow isn't being lit by the sun, it is still being lit by the ambient light of the blue sky).  I also edited the base of the trunk to look more like the base of a cylinder in perspective.  In my opinion, helps root the tree into the ground.

I learned a lot from editing your tree, and I hope you do too.