[Axl]

I've been listening to the Tenchu: Stealth Assassins soundtrack quite a bit of late and was inspired by one track, Hime no Taibyo. It starts off with the howls of a wolf and has a mixture of Spanish guitar ,synthesized sound and what sounds like an old American Indian man singing.
I thought I had finished this a few days ago but wasn't really happy with the background so I added the Buddah statue and more detail to the rocks and water and a few other areas.
Comments and crits are welcome, tell me what you think.
Thanks.

[Loxley]

Cliched pose/expression.

[Axl]

Wow, great comment there Loxley most helpful!

[Fate]

I think what Loxley was trying to say is:

the proportion is all wrong; the bamboo trees and the grasses shouldn't be that big if it's so far back. Just compare the size with the samurai guy in the back, it's not that hard.

the colors are way too bright and saturated, especially the greens on the bamboo trees. And the lightsource seemse very inconsistant.

The ninja dude looks like he has no chin, like his face is part of his neck or something. Work on your anatomy more.

[Ultrasuede]

I think you did a lot of work on this, and it's not too bad. There are a few things to me that make it seem weaker than it could be.

The colors are a little too primary. The water is too blue.. it looks like you want it to be a swamp, so maybe greener water would look cool.

Also, the water looks very static at the ninja's feet. Some ripples would liven it up.

I messed with your picture in photoshop to see what my ideas might look like..here ya go.




As for Loxley's comment.. It's true.. this kind of pose is used a lot, but thats not really a bad thing. Some sort of reason for the pose would justify it more.. Like maybe the shadow of his next opponent or something. Who is he looking at, and why is he looking at them like that?

I dont think I could have gotten as far as you did with the image. I'm still prety green. So I appologies if this seemed condascending in anyway.

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: Ultrasuede ]

[Tinusch]

I think they're being overly hard on you. This is a good picture. Very good. I love the bold colors and the soft shading technique. The muscles look really nice, and the face is excellent. But the picture definitely isn't perfect. It suffers from the same flaw I've noticed in most of your pictures, and that's a lack of depth. It all looks a little flat. I think there are a few things that contribute to this: First, the level of detail is completely uniform. The background is detailed just as meticulously as the fore, causing a conflict of focus. Details should diminish as they go further from the viewer. Another contributing factor is the use of such bold colors all over the image. Again, there is a conflict of focus as the eye is pulled in all different directions by the bright colors. I think you should continue to work on this image. Maybe add a slight fog to the background, thicker as it goes further back, to force a feeling of depth. Desaturate the colors in the background, and try to tweak everything to create a slightly more unified color scheme. Try not to stick with one color for each object you're coloring. For example, the water is almost completely blue - add in some reflections. The robe is completely red - throw in some bounce light from the plants or the water or his skin. His skin is all one solid color - it definitely needs some variety, such as cool shadows and reflected red light from the robe. I think you could easily make this picture dramatically better, with just some tweaks of what you already have here.

[NeoFun]

This piece is far from perfect, but I LOVE it. The style is great and I like the story in it. Ya, the body is off, and so is about everything else-- but I don't think everything has to be photo-realism. The only large problem I have with it, would be his bandaged hand. Use your own hand as refrence.

[Asurfael]

I always tought it WAS a swamp, not a lake of some sort... I've given my comments for this previously. As for somebody asking how to link pictures from geocities, rename the pictures as .txt instead of the .jpg, upload them to geocities as .txts and then use the img tag to show the image.

[Axl]

Loxley: Sorry, you got on the wrong end of a bad mood, my apologies.

Fate: Thanks for your comments.

Ultrasuede: The make-over looks much better, more atmosphere and the water looks alot better, thanks.

Tinusch: Thankyou for your kind words. I see what you mean about the level of detail being too uniform and the colours also.
I'm going to completely re-do the background and change it from a daytime scene to night-time seeing as ninja usually operate during the night. I think it will also help me to create more atmosphere and depth.

NeoFun: Thanks for your comment, much appreciated.

Asurfael: Yeah, thanks again.