[ WIP ] Bowl Monkey

[Argyle]

Updated at long last after what I did not reallize was over a year after this thread's creation.. Sorry for the zombie revival

This is was originally intended for the previous weekly challenge (Circled) at PixelJoint but I did not have any time to work on it after starting it early that week.  Though I won't be able to enter it as a challenge entry anymore, I still wanted to finish it!

Stages:



<-----NEWEST

Circle canvas was removed.  No real need for it since this isn't a restriction I need the piece to adhere to anymore.



I know there is much left to do, and I'm liking the progress.  Just getting a little intimidated as I move toward being almost ready for the fine-touch rendering.  The shading of the curvature of the bowl is my biggest worry.  Will be working on this when I find time throughout the week, but will be checking the boards to see if any critique is offered (and it would be very appreciated if it was!).

[Peach]

hi Argyle, a pity you didn't managed to submit one of your PA on the contest (apart from the fact that the one I liked most was the latest you posted).

anyway, talking about this one:
one small think I can suggest you is to keep the background as simple as possible, as well as using lighter/desaturated colors to make the foreground character knock out!

keep it on, is going to be a great piece 

[Argyle]

Thanks, Peach, and I'm glad you went ahead and made your fisheye invert (maybe it was a handplant, can't recall) piece, cus it turned out excellent!

[Argyle]

Had some time to tinker with it the other day again finally.  Only really made changes to the face so far.  I would love to move on to trying to render some of the body hair but still am struggling to find a method that's readable and clean.  I feel my pixelling skills have improved for sure since last I've touched this though, which made me happy when comparing the last two WIP stages.  Thanks again, Hexquisite Corpse!

[Dusty]

Hmm, is the scene supposed to be fisheye perspective? If so, I think the board could use some distortion of sorts to follow the curvature of the sphere. Right now it looks as thought he's jumping out of the bowl instead of actually skating within it. Not sure if that was your intention or not.

[Argyle]

I was going for an air kind of like this:



Kind of when you tweak out your front or back food mid-air then tuck it back up toward your body just before you go back in.  So the frame we are seeing of the monkey would be when it's tweaked out, and the board follows a different perspective curve than the bowl in the fisheye effect.  Though you may be right in terms of curvature of back wheels.  As it stands, the axle the back wheels run along might look too straight for how deep toward the edge of the lens' view.  I may keep the canvas size the same, but widen the radius of the circle that depicts the lens so it extends off the canvas which would allow me a little leeway to keep the distortion as it is now instead of having to distort it further.

[Argyle]

I haven't touched this in a dragon's age. Huge update!



The background and how much I didn't like it were my biggest problems with the piece so I decided to overhaul it completely for the sake of pushing this out of my WIP folder.  Large overhauling was done on the monkey.  I feel that the fur is a bigger step in the right direction compared to how I was going about it last year. As far as the current background I've got laid out so far goes, I was planning on adding something toward the bottom of the canvas hinting that it's the thing he's ramping off of, but as I kept moving him around to get a feel for where I wanted him to be placed I grew fond of the presentation without any visible ramp or launch site in view.  If it looks too out of place as this progresses maybe I'll have a vine following in the background to suggest maybe that's where the momentum came from before he let go and this picture was taken.  We shall see.

And it's purely coincidence that I started this almost exactly a year ago, I didn't even notice until I went back and checked the date I started this thread on, haha.  I haven't touched it hardly before today since then.  Happy anniversary, ape guy.

I would love any critique on the background or whatever nitpicks you can muster.  After taking a look at Henk Nieborg's works on background environments I wanted to give a shot at layering my backgrounds more for the amazing depth he portrays. I will detail it more than it is right now, for sure - I've barely got any lighting going on so far - but my biggest issue is always background composition so I wanted that to feel good before going into that yet.

Thanks for viewing.