Loyalist Portrait Series

[beetlenaut]

I'm not sure, but wouldn't the sword of the master bowman hinder him where he has it?

And doesn't the grip look a bit phallic sticking up where it is?

[thespaceinvader]

No more so than any other sword hilt.

Some people see phalluses everywhere...

[Simons Mith]

Revised javelineer. I must say I'm at a loss with Kitty's make the leather more leathery". I added a few patches of brownish-green relief and tweaked the light, but other than that I'm not sure what I could do.

I think I see what she's getting at. The reflections are still too 'metallic'. In fact the earlier draft pictures had leather that looked more leathery. Now you've started refining it, it's looking increasingly metallic. While you can do leather as highly-polished as you've drawn, you get it in things like shoes, not leather armour. I had a quick look online, but couldn't find any good reference pics for green leather armour. [As an aside, the colour of his armour also makes the guy look rather bilous.]

I would suggest both toning down the highlights significantly, and reducing their area, particularly the highlights on his shoulder. Finally, reduce the sharpness of the cutoff between the reflected highlights and the main leather; that in particular is contributing a lot to the metallic feel. Anything you can do to make the reflections weaker and more diffuse should help.

BTW, I'm being rather presumptuous in being so specific - my only artistic knowledge comes from dabbling in raytracing, which is a rather different discipline. Apologies

[LordBob]

A quick set of answers:

Javelineer:
- he owes his greyish face to the light angle I choose: intense sunlight straight up, coming slightly on his back. His face is shaded by the helm, but I'm having a hard time finding a decent skin tone judging by your reactions
- thanks to you Mr Mith for your leather insight: I'll try and make good use of it. Note that modern leather armour is actually crafted with polished leather (but this is the way of modernity); still I'd rather keep worn out leather for the orcs and goblins - anyway I've found a nice texture of old worn out leather, I hope it can help
- last, the green armour is (at least to me) a welcome change from the all-shiny loys, so I'll be keeping it.

Master bowman:
- moving his sword to the right should dispell the feeling of hindrance
- will go for a slightly longer arrow

EDIT : adding the revised javelineer. If the boss is satisfied with him, I'm calling this version final.

[LordBob]

And also a double post to include a revised Halberdier

[Girgistian]

Just dropping by to add extra encouragement, the javelineer's guy's really well done. I really like how you've managed to shade the spearheads

Pfft, you posted at the same time. Great work with the halberdier as well though, the breastplate's reflection looks very nice.

[Mirion147]

Skin color looks good to me now. Might want to touch up his right cheek though. Other then that it looks much excellento .

And so does the halberdier!

[thespaceinvader]

The jav looks great, but i think the face could still use a little more love. in particular, the way the eye nearest us goes down at the outside makes him look really worried or anxious.

I've committed your revised halberdier. it looks great =)

[kitty]

great stuff like always.
what i meant regarding the leather armour was what simon smith described, i think one could tone down the highlighs a bit, but it's not important and certainly fine as it is.
the javelineer's skin colour is also much healthier now! two things still bother me about his face. the nose ends too high, noses bend in between the eyes, not between the eybrows. and i miss a little shadow casted by the moustache on the lip. should be two tiny, quick fixes

[Captain Swing]

A quick set of answers:

Javelineer:
- he owes his greyish face to the light angle I choose: intense sunlight straight up, coming slightly on his back. His face is shaded by the helm, but I'm having, hard time finding a decent skin tone judging by your reactions
- thanks to you Mr Mith for your leather insight: I'll try and make good use of it. Note that modern leather armour is actually crafted with polished leather (but this is the way of modernity); still I'd rather keep worn out leather for the orcs and goblins - anyway I've found a nice texture of old worn out leather, I hope it can help
- last, the green armour is (at least to me) a welcome change from the all-shiny loys, so I'll be keeping it.

Wow, Bob -just wow.

Not these two specifically, but I took in the whole army of portraits you've done and am super impressed. I don't know if you realize, but if you compare your most recent work with the first two guys you put up on here it's an amazing improvement -- I mean the first guys were good, but the quality of portraits you're producing now outshines them by a lot. It's not only impressive, but pretty inspiring to those of us who are just starting to try a hand at computer illustration.

As to the leather armor debate - I don't have much to say, a little darker/greener color might 'help' as the light green feels a bit metallic itself (some sort of odd alloy or was of paint). I also can't help but wonder if the gorget might look better with the same color as the leather - as it is now the head stands out as different, but not specifically as a different material, using the gorget to set the two materials side by side might bring the contrast in more. This is just a thought, it might not even work and it's not really an issue. Anyway just wanted to throw down some compliments.

Oh Edit: On the face/lighting issue - if the lighting is coming from below, would there be a hard shadow thrown across the face by the neck armor? Or would you get some reflected light? I don't know, but a distinct shadowed line might get across that Mr. Tossy Spears is in shade and not sickly?

...Swing

[Simons Mith]

Last-minute sugestion for the leather armour; leave the leather as-is, but make the metal studs holding the various parts together much shinier. [May well not be possible, considering how small they are.] That might make it more apparent that the armour is well-maintained non-metallic armour, rather than badly-maintained metal, IYSWIM.

Edit:

@kitty: 'Ere! How did you guess my real name?!

[deserter]

Sorry to jump back to Javelineer, but aren't his spare javelins a bit more sketchy that those that he's holding? They have dark, jagged outlines, while those that he's holding are really smooth and perfect.

[LordBob]

There will be another revision of the javelineer accounting for the latest round of comment.

In the meantime, I've begun the woodsman. I'm not satisfied with his face and his right hand: both deserve some love and advice is especially welcome about the face.

Additionnaly, someone noticed a while ago that patches of red pixels were orbiting the general portrait: I've corrected this, here is a cleaned version for comittment

[thespaceinvader]

Committed that general revision.

As regards the woodsman... The first issue that I notice is not his face, it's his shirt. The front of it looks really flat. I think this is due to the lack of folds across the front coupled with the diagonal directionality of the texturing, particularly because there's little variation in the texture as it curves around the body. A few more folds down near the belt would be good, as could sorting out the edges of the texture.,

His face could stand a lot more contrast. His expression looks great, it's really characterful. But none of it really seems to come out in 3D More contrast and more obvious shadows, particularly shaping his mandible and chin, would help there i think. I really like the general idea of him, though =)

[kitty]

i just spent some time doing a quick paint over for the woodman's face. i introduced some more reddish hues additional to your yellow-ish base. what makes your version a bit strange is mainly the strong black outline of the eyes which almost appears like kohl. i added some eyelids and dark circles around the eyes. and generally some darker brown-ish shadows... hope that helps.

and i just noticed that the ear is seen from a different angle than the head.