It's a nice picture, but first I want to talk about lens flare, and when you shouldn't use it - such as in this picture.
A lens flare requires you to be looking directly at a bright light or the light to be slightly off to the side. You could've passed a lens flare off on the Enoki picture, or even maybe the first one in this thread (maybe), but here there's just not enough of a light source. Even though the picture gets pure white up in the corner, the rest of it is bright enough for the sun to not seem that bright by comparison.
Such an even spread of bright lighting is usually due to a bright day with lots of cloud cover (which you drew). However, that many clouds would probably block any lens flare business.
Anyway, you understand how to do clothing well enough. And you mostly get anatomy by now, except for one thing: gastrocnemius. This is the third criticism today in which I've used the word gastrocnemius, so I'm very tired of the word. Gastrocnemius gastrocnemius gastrocnemius. This guy's gastrocnemius is expecially important since he's two-legged and digitigrade, meaning each one is probably constantly bearing at least 60 pounds. Digitigrade things need pretty powerful gastrocnemii.
My main criticism, though, is that there's nothing really tying the picture together. The character is standing there with all his limbs spread, I presume because it's a windy day and that feels awesome when in a loin cloth. He's looking at something to his right, maybe his hand. There are rocks behind him, looming.
Your first picture was really great, composition wise. Everything was casting shadows from a single light source, it was heavily obedient to the "rule of thirds", it had a definite path for your eye to follow, and the lighting color tinted everything, making the grass a bit paler green, the character a little bit purple, and his cloak a bold red (not that all those things are important, but they all worked together great). Here, everything is very well lit, the character is almost centered and isn't really "doing" anything (other than probably enjoying the wind), and the background is just kind of "there". The viewer is left with a lot of questions about what's going on, but doesn't really care enough to ask. Your rendering is great, but alone it's not enough to make it a great picture.
Oh, and nobody will notice this because the character is so obvious, but those rocks look amazing. How did you do them?
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<i>"This picture shows me that the gray bird man is just a bully and picks on smaller birds. Just because he has no friends and takes it out on others smaller than him to look good. I can see in the parrats eyes that it does however have a understanding of the gray bird man and is upset about getting cut."</i> - Speeza on cartoon birds.
Last edited by Radium; Oct 4, 2007 at 07:37 PM.
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