Castle Paradox

[Royal]

Woo an art forum.
Here's the latest crap Ive painted, comments and critiques are always welcomed.

(yes those are guinea pigs )

[Aethereal]

I believe I already commented on this in IRC...but I will say that when I feel its time for an avatar change, either that guy's face or the guinea pigs will be it.

I like the demonic-looking one the best, heh.
_________________

[Squall]

Holy crap...

You just put every artist and their mommas to shame.

This is in no way related to the Xbox game you're working on, is it?

[Rolling Stone]

ROYAL! Damn glad to have you 'round again. First off, that painting makes beautiful use of light and color, second of all, it's absolutely f*ckin' insane, and it makes my brain hurt and make my smarts go bye bye.
_________________
BANDIT REVOLVER, DOWNLOAD IT OR ELSE.

http://www.castleparadox.com/forum/gamelist-display.php?game=620

[zetes]

Royal...

I hope you've read my comments on your elfwood site. YOU ARE INCREDIBLE!

YOUR ARTWORD IS SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS! It is so incredibly deep, well drawn, and well planned that looking at your art makes me DROOL WITH INCESSANT STREAMING JELOUSY!!

Some day I hope I rock as much as you, but I know I never will. ...

[Royal]

wow, thanks guys...

Aeth- be my guest

Squall- Nope this is only for my personal portfolio, thanks for the
comment.

Rolling stone- Thanks man

Zetes- Heh you make me blush.
I'm sure you will speed past me if you start showing off your stuff so we can get you in the right direction.

I'm still working on this one some issues needs to be resolved, involving rock to the right, some FG vs BG issues and the hands-weight balance on the stick is messed up. I'll post an update when it's done.

Cheers!

[Misteroo]

Geez, royal... that's amazing.
_________________

_______________________________________
--Misteroo--

[Komera]

I agree with the previous posts (and any posts that fall after mine that also agree), it is a very beautiful picture. In the land of the legless, the wheeled man with the guinea pigs is king I suppose. I've never seen monocromatic guinea pigs before, though...

Giving the one pig looking at the "camera" red eyes was quite tickling, almost as much as the one hiding behind the rock. When compared to the sharpy (not a technical term, but cutesy descriptive) mountains and the sharpy dropoff of the path... a roundy rock seems a bit out of place, though.

I like how the metalic surfaces even reflect the color of the path, this is a detail even I usually forget when drawing in metalic objects. But should it be that shiny? I'd expect it to have a worn look, maybe even be somewhat dust covered.

The man's shirt appears to have older folds that have almost been smoothed out from sheer useage being folded into newer folds. Great detail, but a bit exesive in a couple of spots. The carrot seems oddly undetailed compared to everything around it. The flower petals have the appearance of being thrown in as an afterthought. You've evidently are after a kind of slabby mountain, but I believe the slabs should be falling in the same direction. This is at least my observation of what the southern end of the Rocky Mountains does (where it is obviously slabby, that is).

The man's face is oddly short and squashed, and the fingers stangely bent, and even more stangely foreshortened. If it were me, those two details (and only those two) would make me rework it until it was perfect or I was dead. Those two are the most bothersome parts of the picture, in my opinion. But this is me, and I've been known to scrap almost finished pictures over small details.

The feather has an odd bend to it... though appropriate to the rest of the picture. But the feather's tip looks rather unfeatherlike. It looks like a... pea pod shell.

The clouds also seem to be slapped on at the last minute, being rather vague about where they actually are... though of course this is probably an indication of how high up these particular clouds are to begin with. Maybe half the number of clouds you've included would have been a more comfortable number- but I'm not really harping here. Perhaps high altitude clouds come in larger numbers where you live. Where I live, they come in three varieties; not present, occational puffs, or one large and massive cloud covering the entire sky from horizon to horizon (such as now... oh wait... SNOW).

*Vanishes for approximately 5 minutes to look at the newly fallen snow because all the previous snow had melted and this past winter has been decidedly brown.*

Er yeah... sorry...

Though dramatic, it is rather unnatural for thick, lush grass to suddenly stop at the edge of a path. Given how dry the rest of the picture appears, vibrant green grass looks a little off. The curling at the top of the grass might be by wind, but since they don't curl in the same direction, I'm going to assume not.

Lastly, the sky. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about air. I do especially like that you chose not to go overboard with colors, since many people like to put in vibrant skys in late afternoon/sunset pictures. Living in the mountains as I do, I can say with athority that mountains typically do not get much in the way of spectacular sunsets (it is particles in the air that create beautiful sunsets... and since mountain air is typically clean...). Sunrises aren't all that great either. In fact, mountain air is usually pale no matter what color (and time of day) it is. What mountain air excells at is the number of stars you can see... but since you're picture isn't at night... let's wrap this up.

It's refreshing to see a picture of this caliber come out of the OHR community, and doubly so on a picture that provides me a lot to talk about. I mean no insult to our other great artists... but as you've just proven... most of our great artists should spend more time on single pictures than producing mass quantities of pictures.

Gryphon!
_________________
LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[Komera]

Hmm... character limit I suppose? The rest of my post read:

"It's refreshing to see a picture of this caliber come out of the OHR community, and doubly so on a picture that provides me a lot to talk about. I mean no insult to our other great artists... but as you've just proven... most of our great artists should spend more time on single pictures than producing mass quantities of pictures.

Gryphon!"

(As stated in my first cretiquing on this board, "Gryphon!" signals the end of the cretique... I'm just saying it again because no one is used to it yet.)
_________________
LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.

[Royal]

Thanks alot for the critique komera
It's nice to see a person who actually look at all the details in a pic.
You made some good pointers about stuff that needs to be fixed and I agree to most of them.
Some stuff in it is not really realistic but I think it serves the purpose the face is something I'm quite happy about how it turned out, the eyes are too wide apart of course but that's the appearence I chose for this character. I think I got a comment which stated "this is a guy you will get irrated at and just wanna slap him down if he wasn't in a weird weelchair thing pulled by guineapigs"
Hands and clouds should be reworked, the flowers work well though they are not as detailed as the rest of the pic since I don't want to ppl to focus on the flowers (high contrast to the grass) more like they will notice the hiding G-pig.
the rest of the stuff are also valid stuff which I will look into and then when I post the finished piece you can tell me if I suceeded or not

Thanks again, I hope to see some of your art here soon so that I can return the favor.

[Royal]

As I promised updated/finished piece
I wont change it anymore but comments are welcomed as usual. (the hands still look like a mess but fuck it, I spent too much time on this alsready )

[zetes]

W00TY CRAP YOU ARE THE BEST THING EVER

[Aethereal]

That guinea pig hiding behind the rock never fails to crack me up. Neither does the one with red eye (a very nice touch).
_________________

[zetes]

Yeah, the red eyes are cool.

[Komera]

The tree makes the picture feel a bit more complete, though (this is probably just me) I have a longing to see just a little less trunk visible, and the available portion of the branch a little more to the picture's dexter side (that's your left, the picture's right). That, and I think the trunk and branch are a bit too sharp when compared to the rest of the picture. They could use a minute amount of bluring.

Okay, cretique over for now. I've got a month's worth of messages to catch up on.
_________________
LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.