(updated) Warcraft centaur painting

MashPotato · Tue 29/08/2006 00:02:05

I'm finally out of my painkiller-induced haze (seriously, those hit me HARD), and have worked on the picture ^_^.

I changed the tail, changed the eyes, upped the contrast and saturation, added a little more shading here and there (I will be continuing to working on the shading a little more, as well as adding some more hues... as I post this, I can already see things I can improve).

Thanks for all the feedback you all gave me (not to mention, the kind compliments ^_^); I tried to take it all into account when working on this latest version:

I'm still unsure about the background... I was planning on a simple floral pattern (EDIT: floral pattern within that rectangle thing in the background, not the entire background), but I'm feeling lazy--plus, I'm not very good with patterns. Any thoughts? Look okay as it is? (btw, I know the line widths are a bit uneven at the moment ^_^)
Thanks!

Nikolas · Tue 29/08/2006 07:49:51

Well Marina, looking very better (<-o_O)

Anyhow...

What I'm a real practical guy, with no real talent in graphic arts, but I do try to come up with logical feedback. So here's my next comment:

Everything is great except the spear. While she is looking fantastic and kinda wooden (intended I suppose), the spear is made of what material? At the moment it looks completly fake and out of aesthetics because of the colour. It's not metal, It's not wood, it's not shinning anywhere. It actually looks very much ready to break any time now.

Somehow these kind of things (since it is for warcraft) seem to me to make a difference. While I can accept any mythical creature and anything like that, the axe/spear/whatever, since is part of our world, needs to have coherence and resemble our own spears/axes/whatever.

Am I making any sense here?

Anyway welcome back... I'd love to be in a haze for the last 3 days... I would love to...

n3tgraph · Tue 29/08/2006 10:17:42

I agree with SSH on the spear thing,

A logical material for her spear would probably be stone...

Or diamond (if she could afford)

As for the tail

I think it still looks weird with the short tail

It is edited a bit, but I still think it could be a bit bigger,
maybe use leafs for it?

Anyhoo,
I love your edit and I love the art!
Wish I could make something like it!!
Good luck!

SSH · Tue 29/08/2006 10:24:17

Agree with me? But I haven't said anything?

Anyway, I think her left arm looks a bit longer than the right, perhaps its just the angle.

n3tgraph · Tue 29/08/2006 11:45:42

I was agreeing with you on anything!!

Whoops
I meant Nikolas ofcourse

MashPotato · Tue 29/08/2006 19:01:37

Thanks for the feedback ^_^

Nikolas: believe me, it wasn't a nice haze... I think I took too much, and I think it made me feel worse $:-\$ . Anyway, you are quite correct about the spear looking ambiguous ^_^. It's supposed to be made of stone, so I will have to work on making the texture look better (to be honest, I was hoping no one would notice!

)

n3tgraph: she's not based on a horse, but a deer. How can you tell? The only hint (due to my limitations in drawing animal anatomy) is pretty much the cloven hooves, so I'm not suprised it wasn't noticeable ^_^. I'm not completely happy with the tail either... if it was a horse, I would have definitely made the tail out of leaves, but since deer tails are shorter, I was worried that it would just look like there's a tuft of green stuff growing out of her butt $:-\$ . I'll experiment and see if a green tail looks better...

SSH: I think you are right ^_^. I will shorten it slightly... btw, what happened to the dancing jelly-guy avatar?

Sleeping Turtle · Wed 30/08/2006 01:00:04

Quote from: n3tgraph on Tue 29/08/2006 10:17:42
I think it still looks weird with the short tail
It is edited a bit, but I still think it could be a bit bigger,
maybe use leafs for it?

Anyhoo,
I love your edit and I love the art!
Wish I could make something like it!!
Good luck!

I like the short tail; it makes the creature more original. Looking at the hooves it seems more related to the order that goats, deers, antelopes, ect... are in rather than that of horses (most animals in the order Artiodactyla have short tails). Check out these links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloven-hoof or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artiodactyla .

On a side note, I saw a documentary on whether unicorns possible did exist and was just a species of animal made extinct by man, early depictions clearly showed that unicorns are not a kind of horse (order Perissodactyla) but a kind of Artiodactyla (goats, deers, pigs, and llamas are examples of animals from this order).

i k a r i · Wed 30/08/2006 07:24:43

I was bored :S, so I edited your creation..Hope you don't mind.

I just added more volume to its hair, different eyes, different colours, I've reduced her ears and I've ruined the tail so don't look there :S

And..I like your version more =P

Afflict · Wed 30/08/2006 07:48:46

I like Mash's more, The whole color scheme and the ears are awesome.

Also I would suggest putting some of those funky green leafs at her tail
or even making her tail a shrub or hanging leaves like her heir is!

Great work mash!

Would love to know how to do this...

Afflict

Sleeping Turtle · Wed 30/08/2006 19:04:56

Nice colors, but I still kinda prefer the green leaves.

MashPotato · Thu 31/08/2006 00:41:17

Ikari, if I minded paintovers I wouldn't post in the CL

. Interesting colour combination ^_^

Here is the final one, since people seem interested:

Lots of minor changes including adding some hardly-noticeable pink tones to her flesh to give her a somewhat more healthy glow, modifying hooves, adding a little more shading to the body, changing the spear a little, different background colour.

I have already submitted it to the Blizzard site, so don't crit anymore unless you want to make me cry

. I'm kidding of course, feel free to crit away so I can learn for next time... just know that this particular picture's not going to be changed ^_^

i k a r i · Thu 31/08/2006 06:30:25

Well if this guys evaluate style you will win for sure =P

I would say the only "bad" point is PROBABLY (just my opinion) the originality, you could have created a new monster instead of making a centaur girl... well... in this case it looks like a (great looking) mixture between a tree an elf a human and a centaur... She could have born in a weird orgy....O_o

GOOD LUCK

MashPotato · Thu 31/08/2006 06:53:55

A weird orgy indeed O_o. I see your point, but as it was for a fanart contest I didn't want to stray too far from the source material... basically, I mixed the Dryad unit with a Treant unit from the to make a somewhat newish nightelf character

I guess I could have gone a little further in the originality department, but it was never my intention to really try to win anything... I just drew what I felt like drawing, and what I thought would look nice ^_^. Thanks for the well wishes!

AÃ¯Â¿Â½rendyll (formerly Yurina) · Thu 31/08/2006 17:46:33

MashPotato, have you ever thought of making drawing tutorials? With art like this you'll surely get a lot of visitors on your site who wish to view the tutorial. (At least I would ^.^)

I wish you well in the contest!

~Yurina

2ma2 · Thu 31/08/2006 18:12:47

I like the final piece, even though it could still benefit from some greater changes in values in the flesh. The pink gives a nice change in hues, but could have been even greater aswell. Nothing bad about it, I just feel you were afraid to overdo it. I think I see some variation in hues in the bark aswell. Looks good. My greatest concern is the spear, which seem a bit too blurred in some parts, not what you would expect from hard rock (badum-dish;)). The background is also a bit too eyecatching with the more saturated colors. The previous take had a better yet blender background IMO. I'd love to see that pattern you mentioned.

MashPotato · Fri 01/09/2006 01:38:48

Quote from: 2ma2 on Thu 31/08/2006 18:12:47
The pink gives a nice change in hues, but could have been even greater aswell. Nothing bad about it, I just feel you were afraid to overdo it.

I think that's it, exactly... I am afraid to incorporate different colours, and don't really know how to go about blending them. I guess I am still stuck in cel-shading mode, except now I use a paintbrush instead of a lasso -_-;;. I think you are right about the spear as well. However, I think I must disagree on the background colours... maybe it's just because I love saturated colours, but I think the saturated background makes the picture "pop" more, and enhances the colours of the character because the orange is complementary to the purple. Thank you for the critique, 2ma2 ^_^

Quote from: Yurina-chan on Thu 31/08/2006 17:46:33
MashPotato, have you ever thought of making drawing tutorials?

I wouldn't feel comfortable making a tutorial, because, as you can see, I have a lot to learn... if I often don't know what I'm doing myself, I could hardly tell other people what to do! ^_^
However, since both you and Afflict asked about this, for a future picture I could post in here from the beginning of the process, and explain what I'm doing at each step. I could frankly use some critique while I'm working (not only to get some direction, but because once I'm "finished" something, I am often impatient about making revisions), and maybe others could benefit from this too. Would this help anyone?

Mordalles · Fri 01/09/2006 02:50:33

looks lovely, mashpotato.

i would also like to see tutorial! and please mention brushes you use, eg opacity and flow you use in each stage, to get such clean work.

ThreeOhFour · Fri 01/09/2006 16:25:25

Simply divine. And you don't expect to win...

I think this is very nice - a tutorial would be fantastic, but I'm sure even that wouldn't help me.