Travel (WIP)
-
Beautiful sketch and drawing! Love the barbarian character. Just some notes for your consideration:
- In the Western world, movement is always best shown from left to right, due to the fact that our brain is hard-wired for reading from left to right. The amount of space in front and behind a moving character also has a lot of impact on narrative. At the moment he feels like he is “exiting the stage” - which is actually in line with your narrative
- The pose and eye direction is a bit vague in terms of storytelling. Looking down and holding his cape is not the strongest of attitudes/poses. The spring in his gait does not support the sense of an old warrior. Maybe he could be hesitant in his steps and supporting himself on his sword. Or be looking ahead with a decisive stance as if “I´m not too old yet to go on an adventure”. You may think about the story of the image (what has happened, what is about to happen) and make it a real story moment.
- The character is moving, but the boar is not. That´s a bit strange and leaves us wondering whether they are together or not or what´s the role of the boar in general.
- The composition feels a bit split in two, with the sky all empty above (apart the tree) and all the action below. Maybe you could angle that path and make it slope from the mountaintop, so you could place the back character higher in the picture plane.
I love your drawing style - looking forward to see where you bring this image!
-
Thank you very much for the comments and crits. Started to work on some of them. Here's the new background and a rough placement of the characters. Hopefully now the background will give a bit of a hint as to the danger they're heading towards This would be the entrance to the mountain pass. I'll start working on the characters some more once I flesh some more of the background out.
-
Not a 100% sold on either one of my first two attempts so I did a few more thumbnails.
-
@evilrobot I like #1, your previous post with the foreground work is amazing. I really love how that was coming together.
-
I love the progress on this, and I admire your pencilwork. The crosshatching adds some great texture and definition.
-
looking really nice. The foreground elements really help the depth! I know it's only lightly sketched in but watch out with the tangent of that foot and the foreground object.
-
I like number #1 do you need a skull though? It does tend to make a image go to the dark side... just a thought.
-
@evilrobot Really liking this! for me it is #2 that is working best compositionally - could have the second character down from the left and the character at the bottom right be focal points - one of them being secondary - maybe spacing them in a very slightly different way so as to fall nicely on the rule of thirds grid? I'm sure any of these would turn out great though!
-
Another update. Still trying to work out the composition. Nothing set in stone yet. Thinking of having a little gnome riding the boar. And his hands are crap so I'll have to redraw those.Still may change back to the other background.
-
Was able to get a little more done after work today.
-
Love how this is turning out! I am missing his flying tresses, though, -- they made it seem like he was being pushed by the wind , which always adds an element of danger on the side of a cliff! This illustration evokes great story elements!
-
@evilrobot This composition looks very good to me - especially with the boar facing to the right now - cliff takes us in and down - we hit the group on the road - follow the road to the boar - boar and skull send us to our waning hero - I think this is very solid compositionally and the drawing is looking great!
-
Another work in progress. Went back to the pencil look. Going with a comic book style rendering.
-
and starting to add some color.
-
looks like an epic journey and adventure! looking forward for more progress!
-
And a bit further. When I look at it all I see are tons of mistakes and it's not really coming out like I wanted. I really need to work on my hands and figuring out the shapes of those cast shadows.
