Cat fight! Cat fight!..... Sorry, but this part was really fun to write and I'm looking forward to completing the image :)Progress on a picture that has been sitting in limbo for probably close to half a year now. I initially lost steam for it part way through inking, mostly because I have been battling with the positioning/pose of the far figure and the fire dragon. I went in today and just scrapped both of them, then started anew. Hopefully that helps! The dragon is going to get scaled down so that it's smaller than the figure in the foreground, but I am still playing with both it and the far figure it is charging at.
The green lines going across the picture are some guides I grabbed over at Nasan Hardcastle's blog in order to try them out. It really has been helpful in setting up things in this picture, especially since I had more of an illustration kind of look in mind when I started it.
Nice! I like how you use the guidelines to position the characters.
ReplyDeleteI want to add some suggestion/critique for this unfinished piece, if that's alright with you. Otherwise, don't finish reading this paragraph XD The angle from lore drake to the elf feels awkward to me; I think it's the fiery dragon right in the middle (this might change if you scale it down, I don't know). It feels like it's interrupting the movement from the lore drake to the elf.
Have you tried sketching this scene with the elf in the foreground and the lore drake in the background? If you were to do it that way, I would suggest putting the elf in the lower right corner and the lore drake in the upper left, with the fire dragon roaring its way towards the elf, or the dragon even just emerging from her spell. That's just me, though. It'll look great when you finish it :)
Thank you for the comment. Part of my problem is I don't really understand how to work with movement in pictures. It's like a foreign language to me. Call me uneducated, but things like that and lines of motion usually leave me confused. I'm trying to understand them, I just .... don't yet.
ReplyDeleteI do appreciate what you said, though. The dragon feels awkward to me, too, though I think it's because of how it's positioned in here. It feels too clunky to me. You also mentioned an angle change - I'm going to be stubborn and say that I'll keep it how it is, since that's much closer to what I see in my head :)
No problem, I'm glad to be of any help. Maybe if you made the canvas wider you would have more room to work with the dragon and whatever else, but it's up to you, of course ^^
ReplyDeleteTo me, motion is using "movement" in a picture to lead the viewer's eyes to what is most important in the picture. This can even be done in pictures with less action by using the direction a character/object is facing, their angle, colors (especially lighter colors), and even subtle movements they may be making that draw the viewer's eyes to the most important point of the piece or to wherever the artist wants them to look. For example, my eyes want to follow the lore drake's arm to her opponent, but the angle and position of the dragon gets in the way. The opposite movement of the elf to the lore drake creates a nice, visual flow to me, like a circle, and I can definitely tell they're both moving.
Anyway, I hope all of that was useful in some way and particular and fashion :)
Hmmm, I see. Well thank you for the crash course! :D Very helpful, and now I have a name for the way I try to depict lighting to focus attention (or any of that stuff)
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