Okay that simplifies what we need to tell you.
Grand, lets take a look.....
Okay I think we can save him doctor.
All very good. Lets talk about what we can do. Shall we?
Critique
Intro
If you want to make something look more illustrated you must plan each step accordingly. You are building a picture. Each step in building any house requires that you gather all your materials to the build site, and construct. But you have to know what you need to bring to the party. Worksite. Whatever...
For you, now that you have a subject and a placement...(that means you have a drawing, elements of the picture, shapes...)...you have your story. Which is going to help you a lot with design, and overall image value structure. (We are going to skip color, and edges today)
Problem 1: Composition/Framing
The original intention was for a character design. Probably a sheet with some sort of stats and items type of job. It is possible that you rendered the character art on a white background, and added so much detail in the character already. And putting a background behind it did make it look a bit copy pasted.
I'll get straight to the point. You have to imagine that you are going to shoot this with a camera. on a set where you can control the light.
Photographers are obsessed with framing and light. The reason that I am saying you need to think about it like this is because if we look at your image like it was a movie set the below image is what I imagine. It's like a magazine shoot, which is what character art actually is. All the details everywhere are clear. You’ll see the whole character. If you think about it like this it simplifies how you should compose a scene with its elements, light it and frame it.
Illustrators have to work from reference they create or are limited by collecting it online.
Now what you have done here is framed this as a medium shot full figure, at a specific ratio height and width. For what one may assume was to simply fit the full figure into the frame. It’s kind of set in stone. Otherwise as an illustrator you could crop in, move the figure, play with the pose use the foreground/background elements to guide the eye around the frame to your focal points. All things you would work out during the sketch phase or “concepting phase” moving around the elements like cut outs for scrap booking.
So we did not do any composition/framing conception. Or value conception in this critique I’ll leave that up to you because it is subjective and you are not finished.
Problem2: Value
Value construction would look something like this. From the artist Yuyu Wong.
The above photo shows the shape and value concepting phases completed. The composition shapes have been though out and balanced, and the value scheme has been constructed with lighting in mind. The focal point, viewpoint, and composition are all completed masterfully here. The key thing to take away is how simple the greys and darker greys are grouped together when you squint your eyes. The tertiary values with in the groups change minimally from element to element. Providing a wonderful overlap of dark on light on dark repeating throughout the focal point (the character)
I recommend checking out Mr.Cearly's quick book on composition. Its fast and informative. When you have to shoehorn something in there, it is best to know what metrics you are actually trying to decide and not just guess. This book will help you know what those metrics are, and make a confident decision. The first three he deals with teaching you is in the shot above. And in the drawing I provided before.
There are several flaws with your composition like tangents and some arbitrary design choices, you can learn those on your own with the resources provided.
I am going to assume that you wanted a sort of bleak and horror vibe, so the elements of picture making must reflect that.
This sort of idea should lay out your images hierarchy- meaning focal point, mood and supporting elements are complimenting the shapes and design that you provided. I did not change the composition other than cropping in a bit. And didn't do any value pattern concepting. I just used what you had and changed it up a bit.
Now I bet this photo session looks very different...just imagine what it would take to set this scene up with lights!
Best of luck @moirae! I'm glad to see you are still posting.
Till next time.
