[WIP] Planet

[CrazyMLC]

I've been working on this for a while and I finally feel satisfied enough to post it up here.

Newest:


Oldest:


I hope to improve it further but I don't really see what is wrong...

I'm a big fan of criticism (Constructive especially.) and I'd love some comments! So, C+C, please! I'm open for suggestions!  

[Mathias]

I think it's well done. Since meant for a black bg, just put it in a black square for presentation here, it's hard to check it's circular shape the way you have it. It doesn't read incredibly well as a planet by itself, but in the context of it's environment I assume it looks just fine. It doesn't make a very good avatar as a result. But it does look very alien and the texturing is surely interesting. Why not show what this planet belongs to? It seems really random to just post one planet by itself, no bg, no nothing. Show some mo.

[CrazyMLC]

Okay, there you go!
I have it in a spacy background, In this context I'm starting to think about adding a moon (bottom-right corner?) but I don't know if it would be too distracting.
I was thinking it was a relatively new planet with really only plants and maybe some marine life, maybe I could think up something if you like.

I also have no idea whether making it bigger to add more details would be a good choice, etc.

[Pixelized]

The space background definitely improves readability. I think you could add a moon without distracting too much as long as it isn't too bright.

[CrazyMLC]

Moon'd!



I'm wanting the top to look more like glaciers, but I'm not sure how. 

[skw]

just tweak the palette a bit, then you can easily proceed to details. practice polishing and aa (my edit inside the red rectangle is not perfect but it may give you a hint).



are you using Adobe? there's an alpha channel in your piece, I'd suggest deleting it and indexing the palette -- you don't really need it here, as it introduces more mess than actual effect.

[CrazyMLC]

That looks really nice; I gave it a try.

The moon looks a little better, the ice looks a little more like ice... but it doesn't look all that great.
It's official: I'm not good at ice. (I live in sunny California anyway, not much to work off of. (Not that that is a good excuse.))

I'm trying to keep it with warm colors, I just like how it looks. That part of why it has weirdo red water!  

The Alpha channel is left over from the old version where I had some transparency, but I have everything that was transparent totally opaque right now. I could take out the alpha channel if you think I should.
As for using Adobe; no, I'm trying to work into using GraphicsGale but I've been using MSPaint for many, many years. (This was made in MSPaint.)

[CrazyMLC]

I was stumped on what to improve but I managed to improve the forests.

(Those extra blue colors are colors I was thinking of, maybe, using for some sort of comet. Maybe in the top-right? Or is that too many things on the right side... upsetting the balance of 'the force'?)

[CrazyMLC]

(Wow, triple post now...)

I don't think It really works, maybe I did something wrong with the comet...

[Lizzrd]

You should define the shape of the planet more, because now it just looks fuzzy. You could add a white line around it like this:
http://www.soil-net.com/album/Places_Objects/slides/Globe%20Planet%20Earth%20NASA.jpg

But then you should shade it from the side, or have multiple lightsources.