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. I would almost suggest trying to make it look like a stained glass scene, just to see how it turned out.
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The second thing would be to get the shooter to pop, which is one of the challenges of the image. I think introducing some artificial light would be nice here, say, from a lamp, or torch on the ground. This would have some benefits: for starters, it would illuminate him, as there's little light at his spot. Secondly, it would provide warm light, that would contrast against the rest, and make him pop and add colour variation. Thirdly, it would help bring him closer, atmosphere wise, since we interpret warm coloured objects as being closer to us, further making him pop, and giving depth to the bg.
Just as important as the shooter, I'd really make the wizard at the edge pop, perhaps he's holding a staff with some nice lighting effects.
Though this is messier, I'd also experiment with lowering the horizon. It shouldn't really affect the monster to any degree, and mostly the cliff. It would mess up the triangular composition to a degree, but I think it would be worth it, and should be solvable. Perhaps also moving closer to the shooter, making it feel more immediate, and personal. Having high angles tend to lead to a less urgent, distanced feeling, like watching an action scene from a chopper, rather than a hand held next to the actors.
The easiest way to ensure the former is to work zoomed out (about the size of the above thumbnail, where you can't see any details), and work on the entire image, trying to make it work as light blobs. If you can show these blobs to someone and they go: "oo, looks like a nice pic!", then you've succeeded, and can start zooming in and add details, knowing that the piece will work as a whole.
I have no idea what I'm talking about, but is the cultist cliff's perspective correct? Shouldn't it be more flat? As it is, the sniper seems to be on top of their cliff, for which he is too far away laterally. Does that make any sense?
Improvements... hmm... the thing that distracts me a little from the piece is the perspective of the plateau in the background. It's so slanted that I feel people should be rolling off the side...
...UNLESS THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT ME TO THINK and you're going for the Lovecraftian-style mind-defying geometry look.If that's the case (which I hope it is because that's just @#$%ing awesome), you should push the landscape more. Make more parts of the plateau jut off at weird, gravity-defying angles.
One more thing, and it's small. I'd add a bit of shadow under the gunman's knee. I think it would make his crouch look a little more natural and ground him more on the plateau.
. As far as the gunman goes, I'm going to correct all the shading on him, darkening it to match the background cliff so I'll be sure to take care of the shadows as well as they are probably one of the most ominous aspects of the piece. Thanks!
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:This probably sounds confusing, but you go as far as you like with this.
. As far as starting from a dark image and applying highlights based on where I would expect reflections to be, that's an interesting approach I have yet to try. It would make the most sense to me to do something like that in grayscale first.
Cool to see you try out hi-res. Could you post the sketch?
There's no "meat" between the nose and the upper lip. This ogre has too many teeth as well.
When you pixelate in low-res, you add elements to the picture piece by piece, but that's a method that shouldn't be used in hi-res painting.Why do you think so? I'm curious because I've seen some photoshop tutorials both on the net and on youtube that do pretty much what I'm doing and I like their results, and I've never been one to obey 'rules' simply because they exist. What sort of problems do you foresee happening as a result of doing things this way?
Concept art or T-Shirt design, I'd be all for your choice of colors. I'm also curious as to your progression depending on the intent. If it was concept art, for example, I'd expect it was a case of blocking in one solid color then adding highlights. If it was a specific coloring of a pre-designed sketch, I'd expect an entirely different approach from the beginning.
. I also don't 'paint' like most people I guess so texturing the surface didn't even occur to me as something to do. If you have some advice on what brushes to use when and for what, please PM them to me (or make a tutorial!) as I'm just going by feel right now and some painting tutorials I've looked at, so if there's faster (or better) ways to achieve nice looking stuff then I definitely want to know.