Work sample; desert background

[Andail]

A work sample, potentially letting me paint some comissioned backgrounds for chapter11studios.



I might take the opportunity to say that I still have time for more comissions. PM me for payment details etc.

Cheers!

[refoops]

I think that's absolutely beautiful. Reminds me of the scene in broken sword when your in the mountains.

[Babar]

Beautiful is right. But why is the sign pointing off the side of the cliff?
Perception is driving me crazy. It looks like the the entire building is the size of the cow bone(?). Perhaps you could "fade" that portion of the cliff a bit, like you did to the the other bits in the background

[stuh505]

beautiful piece, andail.  is this a work of Painter?

[Ali]

This is a very pleasant image. It might be worth altering the text on the sign though it looks a little squashed as it is. That's a minor point though!

Perception is driving me crazy. It looks like the the entire building is the size of the cow bone(?). Perhaps you could "fade" that portion of the cliff a bit, like you did to the the other bits in the background

I presumed that the stack/column-rocky-thing-with-builings on was way in the distance, not attached to the plateau that the skull and sign are on.

[hedgefield]

Absolutely beautiful. With your help Rise of the Hidden sun will become even better, no doubt!

[DCillusion]

It's very nice.  Perhaps you could make the shape of the sign symetrical, (both sides straight or both sides pointed), as it seems people see it as pointing away from the houses as opposed to anouncing the houses.

.......I think Stuh has Painter fever.  Every quality piece seems to have been with Painter for some reason.

[YOke]

There are some black dots and outlines here and there (skull, front tower, right side of the Hermit's Rest cliff, foreground rock and top of the sign).
They give the objects a crispness that fit in poorly with the "washed" style of the background in general.
The rock behind the skull and some surfaces on the left side of the Hermit's Rest cliff don't have dark enough shadows when you compare them with other surfaces (that appear to be) at the same angle.
Other than that it matches the Chapter11Studios style perfectly as far as I can see.

[Scummbuddy]

if you could, i would change the sign to be better readable. I read it as hermit's pest, not rest. unless it is pest...

this is wonderful, cant wait to see more

[Phemar]

STOP BEING SO DAMN BEAUTIFUL!!!

Sorry, I just get jealous around cool people.

[Kinoko]

Andail - it's GORGEOUS! If I could paint/draw like that, I'd spend all my time in front of the mirror just smiling at myself.

[DragonRose]

It's an amazing peice of work. Just a few nitpicks about matching up with the previously released ROTHS screenshots:

1: The gradient in the sky for previous screenshots isn't as smooth as the one you've used. The screenshots aren't as blended. Also, there has been a bit of extra colour, a darker orange, on the sun itself, instead of the plain circle you used..

2: For the cliff face it's the other way around. The shading is a bit smoother in the screenshots. You matched the style really closely on the distant hills, it could just be a bit smoother on the one in the foreground.

These are teeny tiny nitpicks. The actual linework is fantastic, and your use of colour is dead on. If I didn't know that it was different artists I might not even have noticed those things. Awesome work.

[InCreator]

Yeaaah... wish I could do that too.

No, not the drawing, It's good, of course, yet I believe I could do this with pencil and paper.


But what I mean  --

Colors!!! This is amazing. All the shading and blending...
And nothing sticks out because of wise usage of colors.

Crits?

* Well, the palette of whole scene suggests afternoon, or early evening, with starting sunset.
But setting sun comes to my head along with much stronger shadows, also they should be long and stretched.

* The amount of detail in the house on a hill draws strongly attention -- but this is the farther(sp?) background, right?
With a really nice, detailed and complex building/stuff in the background, this skull, sign and grass in the foreground look very pale. This feels somewhat wrong. You should add alot more detail to the area player is acting on. Especially this bush-y thing at bottom-left: It's blurry and confusing while it should be detailed and visible down to a single leaf - instead.

* I've never seen a sun with a shape like that. If it was intended - to simulate the blurry edges of the sun that happens sometimes when air isn't completely transparent - you should do it stronger. If not -- the part of sun that is hidden behind the cloud gives an imagination of very weird shape. It's difficult to explain, but is clear with a simple observation. Just imagine how the edge continues behind the cloud.

* The bottom-most *visible* part of the mountains far away should get a bit more darker at the bottom, so it would make bigger contrast with the mountain in the foreground. This way they won't blend that much into foreground and it's easier to understand that one is right in front of player and others are far away.

---
Huh, there's actually nothing important to criticize anymore, even as it is now, it's an ultimate challenge to all other artists around here.

[loominous]

Some pretty exhaggerated modifications along with inaccurate cast shadows (ca 150 kb)

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Some issues:

I) The image tilts to the right

II) Depth. I don't think the cliff with the houses is pushed back far enough with colors and values. I exhaggerated a bit.

II) The lighting. My biggest issue is with the cliff with the houses. Please refer to the pic below and mod above which I think explains it best.

What we can see of the cliffwall to the right should be in shadow from what I can tell and can provide a resting place for the eyes with cooler colors. Make sure to neutralize it's color to compensate the strong sunlight color, which goes for all shadows (add violet/blue or simply lower the saturation, both will cool it down when next to the lit up parts yellow hue).

The foreground could use a bit more saturation.

The mountains on the horizon are lit up as if the light was coming from our direction. Same value issues as the cliff with the houses. The clouds have similar problems.



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Very nice all in all though. Your linework's really good and I think lighting/shading is pretty much everything that's holding it back. Looking forward to your next piece.

[DanClarke]

Can i also suggest giving the clouds some sort of blur? They seem a little too sharp. Nice work.

[Oz]

Holy crap loominous. That edit is awesome. The lighting makes me cry...

Good work on the original Andail!

[Andail]

Excellent points all of you, especially Loominous, who pretty much pinned down the last problems I had with that piece.

Some people commented on the short shadows (and Loominous also illustrated that in his edit) but the specifications of the piece said that all shadows must be very soft and subtle, not to clash with the non-existing shadows of the characters (the characters would stick out too much).

Again, good points, million thanks to all of you!

PS:
New version, mostly following mr Loominous's advice:


and one even more orange version:


Which is best?

[Arboris]

personally I'de say the first one, the last one is too orange for my taste.

Altho this just might be me

[.]

This looks more than a canion

[Haddas]

I think it IS a canyon... oh, but where will the road go? straight down? Or is there a ladder, like at the hermits place?