[WIP] Moonlit Apocalypse

[Claredeth]

The hell?  Did you not want to JUXTAPOSE  your objects or did you just randomly add them to the piece?  It started out so good Dex my man, but It pains me to see this no, it lacks control and makes little sense to me, why is the explosion in the back about the same size as the one closest to us, is it that big?  It's made of circles, haha I wont even mention that.

Ah theres too much to mention, just try and look over your details, they need work, your shading is okay.

[Dex]

Well, for one, the shot from the UFO is more powerful than the one in the foreground, making it stronger and obviously bigger. And you forget, it's supposed to be chaotic, things are supposed to seem frantic, etc.

I have everything pretty much where I want it. And it's made of circles because...it's a WIP? Think before posting maybe? Dang.

And it's funny you say you liked it in the beginning because if you look earlier you said you didn't like it then either, haha. Whatever.

@Tuna, it's the moon, what other horizon would I have? If you have any suggestions, please post

[Atnas]

I think they mean, like, a camera tilt, or even better - because it's a small celestial body - a curve to the horizon. But whatever you do I think it would look better EXAGGERATED. It's a chaotic scene, why have a nice even view of it. Maybe it's an upside down camera on the ground with a crack in the lens that we're seeing from.

[Dex]

What you are asking of me is to pretty much start the image over, because changing the angle of everything would pretty much mean redrawing it

I could definitely add a curve to the landscape but I'm not too keen of changing the image's angle :/

[Claredeth]

Whoa what on earth did I post earlier.
I think at this point Dex, you should make a copy or copies of this picture and try to draw lines on it, the lines would be used on every object to measure how big it is and if it is used as a 3D object.  Like some of the objects seems flat to me, as a whole,

[st0ven]

hmm your grasp of coloring and shading seem fairly solid, and your choice of color is quite nice. Now, work on form....

I look at this piece and these were my initial thoughts on the piece as well. your level of technique and choices of color seem well above competent and gives it a nice aesthetic quality to look at. however there is some serious issues with perspective, form, etc, most notably present in the mechanic pieces.

Since this is a WIP, i think that should be the focus of your next 'step' in the piece. round out those UFO shapes to be more perfect or at least more rounded in their ovular shape. The legs of the metal 'walker' objects seem a bit glaring with their perspective inconsistencies, which detracts from all that lovely detail that you have pixelled in them. So as you were tying to point out in your responses to this thread that you dont understand the focus placed on form and anatomy across the board, these things are the fundamental building blocks of your imagery and cannot be ignored if you wish to grow . (i like the leg to the right that Opacus drew on top, that seems much more consistent, but that leg on the left still looks off).

Ive noted youve been doing some back and forth on the laser images as well. i did a little sample to help maybe give you some alternate ideas. I like your hue shifts from orange to red , but this is usually a better technique to illustrate fire or magma rather than lasers. if thats your intention then ignore this, otherwise ill post a quick sample i put together.



Its of "wip" quality just about as much focus as your image currently stresses in its finality, but note the use of the intense white, and then using more of a saturated glowing hue color that envelopes the brightness which gives the laser its colored effect. (consider this the light saber approach to lasers? lol) it would be neat if your spiral bits around the lazer perhaps had more of a zappy, edgy look to it as well i think it would mesh quite well , make the energy feel more pronounced. (remember those hard edges can signify something fierce or extreme).

looking forward to seeing it finished? (hope you dont stop here with it).

[Dex]

Many many thanks St0ven! I've missed seeing you around here, and having you post in one of my topics is great!

I understand about the laser, I'll do what you did with the beam- it looks much more like what I'm aiming for.

I'll also keep working on the perspective of the legs, the right one seems more of an easy fix, but if you don't mind, would you care to point out the bigger issues on the left one, as you mentioned? I'm sure you understand, but sometimes an artist can't always see the BIG flaws in their work

But once again, let me thank you! This is the kind of critique I yearn for from pixelation. I'll await a reply and be sure to update.

(And don't worry, I don't plan on stopping )

[Stratto]

Looking great, but the left mehcanical leg seems very flat to me, and the astronauts seem very distracting form the whole piece, I would reccomend making the white a little bit darker, although this may be because its still a WIP.
I forsee a great piece 

[st0ven]

So here is a basic interpretation of what i mean. First off the perspective on the legs of all the bots in the foreground are completely confusing (i really dont care to touch on the anatomical topic that earlier posts had mentioned as im not one to comment on stylized anatomy unless it looks truly bad which isnt exactly the case here) So via the greenish lines, i hoped to sort of accentuate some of the differences between the current nearly 'isometric' perspective legs where the top face never seems to come towards the camera, but rather stay on its own flat plane and tries to twist its way downward without the luxury of a third dimension. let those forms bend outward so that they come towards the viewer. It definitely helps to establish these forms BEFORE even thinking about doing any sort of detailed pixel popping, or else you risk the sad reality of having to lose all that nice detail because the basic forms dont quite make sense (did i mention that the shading work is really nice? )

As for the other UFO forms, really round out those forms and make sure the geometry behind them is clean and symmetrical. theyre looking very WIP'ish as your upper caption would suggest. taking a short amount of time to even these forms out should greatly enhance the composition and strike a more immediate aesthetic chord within the viewer's mind. Shouldnt take more than several minutes to clean those ovular forms up, which is good news!

The orange strokes sort of imply to me how the composition of your piece should logically flow given all thats currently present in the image. it roughly follows this already, but the forms really break the flowing comprehension from element to element. try to keep in mind that flowing organic nature of the work while finishing out its composition for a maximum synergenic impact.

Lastly, the horizon was suggested to be more ovular by other members rather than just being flat, which is indicated by the blue line there. Id say that if this were a side scrolling game mockup, its current level nature would certainly suffice, but i can see a great benefit to the piece by trying to round that horizon a bit. it will echo / reinforce the ovular shapes pronounced by the ufo ships which is a good thing. Even if you decide to keep it flat however, i feel like there is a big issue with how the ground was rendered as a whole. it feels very cobble stone ish in nature, and much like the legs of the mechanical monsters, they seem to suffer a bit from a lack of perspective and form, regardless of how cleanly theyve been rendered. your stone slabs need to be much flatter and more compact as they reach the horizon line. Once again, if its a game mockup on a limited platform maybe this would be more acceptable, but for a study of composition this needs some serious address. Reason being, it is the one unifying element that you have in your composition that ties all the other ground elements together. if that large component doesnt convince the viewer that its accurate then it pretty much shatters the illusion of unification youre trying to achieve.

I can tell with this piece you are having a blast really focusing on rendering beauty into the individual elements, but without those basic forms and rules of perspective, all the beautiful rendering tends to suffer in the confusion to the eye. remember your audience do not need to be artists to be able to distinguish when things feel 'off' or 'wrong', even if they lack the artistic understanding to explain exactly why that is the case.

You mentioned that it would be a real pain to basically 'start over' and while i dont think you need to do that, it could certainly benefit from a lot of formation before detail before you proceed to introduce any further detail, and this might mean redoing a lot of things you currently have rendered. 

[Tuna Unleashed]

Also, what is the little dude in the front doing? it looks like he's practically waving at the camera. Its like the alien apocalypse, shouldn't he be a bit more involved?