Graphics - Opinion Please?

Aardvark

I'm not sure if this is the kind of graphic you guys mean or not -

Me and my girlfriend are wanting to start a comic book - we already do a webcomic, and we're experimenting with Cell Shading - I was wondering if ya'll could give me honest opinions about this - the colors, shadow, and lighting are done in PS7 - it was inked by hand though.

Thrax

Not too shabby! I very much like your style of drawing. My only qualm with it is the lines, they're too thick for my taste.

Aardvark

Ok doke. Its because of all the extra layers, I think. The original Black and White stencil she sent me was much thinner o.o

My girlfriend actually drew it - I handled the colors and shading. She did the hard part =P

MediaMan

This is a finicky comment.

The light source is over the right shoulder of the character so the rim of lit hits the upper body correctly but not the legs. The lighter shading should be on the top of the calves progressing to darker nearer to the shins. You've got the light source hitting from the sides.

The sword needs a little bit of work; too dark for my tastes and I'd stay with the shading technique used on the body as opposed to grads. Meaning you've got soft grads on the sword between light and dark and on the body it's hard lines. Stay with hard lines to give the sword shading.

But it's good artwork. I just mastered stick figures myself so I'm not one to be too critical.

Linc

"Graphics and Sound" refers to hardware, btw. I moved this to Digital Media

Agree with MM's critique of the sword, but excellent work no less!

primesuspect

It's a bit pixellated, but I think that may be a technicality - certainly no slight to the actual artistry. Very nice

Dexter

I gotta agree with MediaMan: the first thing that struck me (even before seeing MM's comment) was that the shadow is "wrong." The angle on the shadow is not realistic. Judging from the sheen on the sword, the character's right elbow armour, and legs, the light source would appear to be high, which would make the shadow smaller, tighter to the character. Then I have to ask, what casts the shadow on the character's hair on the front left side of her head? There is nothing physically in the image to cast a shadow there. Finally, follow the shadow aong the legs at the bottom. The sahadow tends to follow a straight line, but that line does not run parallel to the legs. If that is the case, then the light source would have to be *behind* the character....which would throw the rest of the shadows out.

Because of all that, I'm going to guess that you created your shadow by taking a copy of the character, darkening it, blurring it, and 3D transforming it, right? If so, the problem that creates is that the lines are to to true to the original form, rather than extruding at a life-like angle from the form in reference to the light source.

The artwork itself is good, a little heavy on the stroke lines like Thrax said, but well drawn and well coloured. But the shadow detracts from it. An inecperienced eye notices that something is wrong, but can't put a finger on it. The experienced eye sees the shadow as an inidicator of difficulties with light source. Shading, shadowing and light-sourcing is a very difficult thing to get good at, but it adds a dimension of realism that is sub-conscious to most viewers: when it's done right, the picture just "feels" right to the viewer.

Good work, keep posting more

Dexter...

Aardvark

That was the very first thing I've ever cell shaded- thank you for the in-depth advice. I'll be sure to post our next art peice here and see if I can't improve on the shadowing. hmm...