thespaceinvader's portraits - Ancient Wose

[A-Red]

It's looking good to me--on a couple of very minor notes, the line of the explorer's chin appears to be horizontal, even though the head is tilted, and I think his bicep dominates the arm a little too much--I *think* it's because it ends too high.

[Turuk]

For the Explorer, per the rear arm statement by kitty and your reference photo, you are right that the position is a natural one, but what kitty sees is that, in the photo of yourself, you can see a bit of your forearm sticking out that shows the angle of the forearm for the hand placement to be normal. In the Explorer portrait, we see only the hand, and copying that stance by hiding the forearm completely is uncomfortable.

[A-Red]

For the Explorer, per the rear arm statement by kitty and your reference photo, you are right that the position is a natural one, but what kitty sees is that, in the photo of yourself, you can see a bit of your forearm sticking out that shows the angle of the forearm for the hand placement to be normal. In the Explorer portrait, we see only the hand, and copying that stance by hiding the forearm completely is uncomfortable.

True. It seems to me that the general placement of the arm is right, but that the belly, the hips, and the leg on our left are all too far to the left--if they match the pose in your reference photo, more of that forearm would be revealed. (granted, the dwarf is pretty stout, but I don't think that accounts for all of it).

[thespaceinvader]

Various fixes made. I call this explorer final. Shading Scout later.

[kitty]

The explorer looks much better now

You're basically there - just a few things to fix:
I still think that there is something off about the shading of his front upper arm. The biceps seems too elongated (especially for someone as short as a dwarf) and the line describing its lower end should go. Here is a pic of an ugly bodybuilder with not an identical but similar arm posture. Notice that even this muscled guy has nearly no "lines" inside his arms. Only the ones extending from the outer lines and not many of those either.
The shading works overall, you should only darken the spot between his legs, the dropshadow of his shirt and add dropshadows of his head (on the shoulder), the shovel, a little one of his girdle and the axe (on the leg). And the main lightsource is set in the left upper corner but the green blanket roll seems lit from front-right.

The scout flats looks fine to me now.

[thespaceinvader]

Cool cool, I'll get to that tomorrow, i think. I'm done for the night, unless Jet has anythign more for me, animation-wise. Here's some more Scout to keep you all going til tomorrow...

He's basically done apart from his stache, and i think his face needs some more attention...

[Bad_Dog]

The axe blade held by his left arm looks as if it hasn't been adjusted for perspective - the top attachment of the blade looks fine but the lower one nearest his hand looks funny somehow.

-Ben

[AI]

His left hand and the axe-handle he's holding don't seem to follow the same line.

[thespaceinvader]

. . . How did I miss that?

*tries to decide whether it would be better to fix it by redrawing the axe, or the hand...*

[SouthernOracle]

The hand looks fine, but the angle is going to call for the axe handle to be seriously foreshortened (it would be coming at the 'camera' it seems to me).

[Jetrel]

Major blemish on an otherwise good portrait:

You completely goofed the upper-arm shading (curiously, the lower arm ain't bad).

paintover.png (66.39 KiB) Viewed 5477 times

You keep making this mistake again, and again, and again on all your work. Specular highlights go at the surface-angle facing HALFWAYS BETWEEN the eye and camera. NOT at the one facing closest to the light source.

I know it feels more intuitive to do the angle facing closest to the light source. It feels like it should be brighter, because there's more light hitting it. There is more light hitting it - that part is correct. But it doesn't bounce into our eye from that angle! That's the big 'trick' to this; it's not just how much light is hitting a spot, but whether it would also bounce into our eye, pool-ball style. The spot where it would gets the highlight; fortunately, that spot is predictably about halfways between the spot facing directly at the eye, and the spot facing directly at the light source (this btw is in terms of surface angle, NOT position).

We only see stuff as bright if the light actually reaches our eye. If it doesn't reach our eye, it doesn't matter that there actually is more light hitting that part of the surface - it's also got to reach our eye.


The fact that this is dependent on those -two- factors makes shading really unintuitive, but hopefully we can help you avoid learning this the hard way (i.e. years of practice).

[thespaceinvader]

I tried to avoid it there - seems i didn't go far enough in shading the back of those curves in. Well, there's a round of fixes due, I'll add that to it.

EDIT: this should fix the issues raised, I think. Will commit after kitty's say-so.

EDIT: done some fixing to the axe, but I think it's not worked. Any opinions? I'll probably be better off redrawing the hand, i think. I'll sort some reference out...

[thespaceinvader]

Attach bump for linework for the Scout with a reworked hand. I think this is a winner... Filling in the missing bits and redoing shading now.

[kitty]

Much progress on the Explorer! Just smooth out the messy shading on that upper arm and tone down that deep shadow at the bicep's lower end and he willbe fine.

And the latest fix on the scout's perspective issues works well. Only his left hand's foremost pinky phalanx got too flat in the process.

[thespaceinvader]

Shaded scout. I;d like to get these committed tonight, so keep those crits coming =)

I'll make those fixes to the explorer.

EDIT: voila.

EDIT: scout fixes. Committed the Explorer to trunk.