Painting

[Andail]

No idea behind it really, just relax-painting a bit now that my job is getting less and less stressful.
Feel free to comment. Don't really know where to go from here.

cheers

[zenassem]

I love it the way it is. Wouldn't do anything more to it. Awesome painting, thanks for sharing it.

[Ryan Timothy B]

My only problem was that my eye was having a problem judging whether that object running along the mountain was a space ship or something sitting on the mountain.

I made it a lot brighter just to see what difference it would make.  Hmm.  Not sure if it worked out for better or worse.

EDIT:  Oh and yes.  I love the image.  That sign welcoming people to the city is almost a little boring and out of place.  But I love the work you did on the mountains and the flat cliff thing the city is on.

[Matti]

Nice panting. Reminds me of a starwars-artwork-book I once posessed.

City and Spaceship could perhaps be a little more detailed, but it's okay the way it is.

[Evil]

Looks pretty good. Some cropping issues around the bottom and the thing that Ryan Timothy said. The only other recomendation I would have would be to lighten up the clouds around the center mountain. The tones are too similar and blend together which drag the horzion down and then you have issues of excess negative space.

[Dualnames]

Coolish stuff, Andail.. as alwayss.

[EldKatt]

Neato.

Something about the cabin of the zeppelin thing (I realize it's not really a zeppelin, but you get the idea) makes me feel a lack of depth. Could be the shading to some extent. Could certainly also be that the white window things all appear to line up with the edges of the picture itself.

[loominous]

What kind of mood/feeling/style are you aiming for? What part is more important, the ship, the fort like thingy, the sky? All equally important?

I know it's more of an unpretentious relaxation piece, probably made without much forethought, but it's always tricky and discouraging to give advice when you don't know the intention and preferences of the creator.

(If someone I know well wants comments on something, I know what he/she likes n usually aim for, so I can make a lot of accurate assumptions, which makes a declaration of intentions less important).

[Andail]

Loomy, I think you've identified my problem
It's not that I lack stories; I write a lot and have nice visions of wonderful pictures I want to paint. But when I commence on those more planned and thought through projects I don't get anywhere, and my progress slowly grind to a halt.
Only when I start out with aimless sketching, unpretentious, unplanned jotting, I actually go all the way to finish the painting. As a result, my paintings often lack story-telling and dramaturgy. They're unplanned, simply.

[Matti]

Ha, Andail, I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't paint but I draw and the unplanned drawings are often the best while most of the planned ones remain unfinished.

[MashPotato]

It's looking good, I especially like the rocks of the cliff, cool stuff
I think the layout could be a little more balanced, as my eye is kind of led to the middle of the picture due to the angle of the zeppelin, towers, and mountain range all intersecting at the same point, at which there is nothing going on.  I did a really quick move-around and crop (and some other stuff too, but I think you can ignore that)

It's not a great example, but it brings the buildings more into focus  (possibly.  I'm not the master of this kind of stuff )

[Andail]

I see what you did there, Mash, and it makes sense. I think another way to make the picture more logical would be to add something more eye-attracting where those mentioned lines converge. Like a big, bright tower top or something.
I'll work on it.

[paolo]

My only problem was that my eye was having a problem judging whether that object running along the mountain was a space ship or something sitting on the mountain.

The image looks fantastic.

Some suggestions for making the ship look more like it is in the foreground:

* Add more detail to it (as matti has already suggested).
* Make its colours more saturated (brighter). Making distant objects greyer acts as a depth cue, so making near objects brighter has the opposite effect (assuming your planet has an atmosphere, otherwise there is no attenuation of colour with distance).
* Sharpen the edges between different parts of the ship.

You can't let your images go to waste... rather than being commissioned to produce art for a particular project and then getting bored, have you considered just building a game around a set of images you already have or passing them to someone else to do the same?

[Snarky]

While the technique is good, I'm not thrilled about what you've done with the subject matter. That fortress (?) sitting smack in the middle of some sort of mesa? With nothing around it except a single road and some sort of gate or sign? That doesn't look convincing to me. Maybe it's the fact that the fortress is completely square, and aligned with the sides of the mesa. Or that the bridge is right in the middle of one of those sides, and at a perfect right angle. Maybe it's the utter flatness of the ground. Maybe it's the cartoony overhang of the sides of the rock face.

Actually, yes, it's all of these things. It's all too convenient to be true, and something of a cliché to boot. If you want to go for "realism", things should look messier, more idiosyncratic and less generic. Maybe a pipeline goes from the buildings over the edge of the cliff (for fuel, water, waste, or whatever). Maybe part of the cliff has caved in, and construction crews are securing the remainder from cracks, etc. Maybe there's a shanty town that has grown up outside of the walls. Or a garbage dump off to the side. Maybe the entire structure is abandoned and falling apart. Maybe it was built on top of another structure (like an ancient stone temple, say), still visible underneath. Maybe that rock bridge is unstable and propped up with steel girders.

If you want something that is way over the top, on the other hand, you might have to exaggerate further. For instance, the fortress now takes up a harmonic proportion of the land it sits on. If you shrink it, that would emphasize the vastness of the terrain. If you make it bigger, that would stress the limited space available on the mesa itself.

Not trying to be harsh. It's something that only became apparent to me after looking at it for a while. But you know how a lot of people draw these very stereotypical, boring castles that are closer to being a symbol of the idea than the real thing? This is kind of like that, though not nearly as bad. I really like the design of the air ship, on the other hand. Classy, unique, elegant without looking overly simplistic. Very cool.

By the way, the entire thing reminds me of a heighliner approaching spice refinery in the Dune 2000 RTS game (screenshots). Maybe it's the color scheme, or the cylinder design of the air ship, reminiscent of the space ships in Lynch's movie.

[Ren]

Looks like ''Beneath a Steel Sky''.

[radiowaves]

Nice pic.

Very well done, better than I am capable of. However, if you want nitpicks, here are few:

There seems to be certain line between background hills and hills in the horizon, like there is nothing in between. Too layered, perhaps.

The second thing is that the airship and castle seem to share focus. One needs more detail, sharper colors. Or, since the ship is moving, a bit of motion blur or something....?