2 months later

Sep '17

Great sketches! Especially the third one seduces my eyes.

Regards
Jonatan

Sep '17

Yup, third one is great, first one is also really good

Sep '17

4.jpg4416x2484 1.05 MB

3.jpg4416x2484 1.04 MB

I heard a phrase the other day called "napkin sketches" where only the artist knows whats going on in the sketch. These are my napkin sketches :smile:

So I am changing tactic and going with concepts simultaneously to these types of thumbnail ideas... I'll upload those soon

Sep '17

oh and yes, I took that one thumb to 3d with photobash and paint etc. But I didn't like it in the end. Needs reworking for another time

Sep '17

Trev. You're going to have a lot of painting to do! Coming together though. Little more industrial than fantasy now. I feel like the white light shapes could be a bit more 'designed' I don't feel like the ones at the side are serving your composition. In that regard I think concept8.jpg top of this post is a little better. The smoke trails and the bridge are leading me into the structure.

Just a little thing in concept10 there is some negative space between the legs of the platform that is pulling focus from what I assume is gonna be your focal point on the front there. I would try reducing the value (and thus the contrast) on the building behind it there, give it some atmosphere to knock it back.

Sep '17

Thanks Josh! Perfect crit and it allows me to mention what I should have when I posted these. I should have totally put up a few "disclaimers" here to save your time in critiquing this. You are totally right about every point you make. The concepts -8&10 are totally not thumbnails of the final image though. They are more mood explorations where I can get as many ideas into an image as possible - like visual notes- rig, pipes, temples, sunset, fire, destruction, pagodas, toriis, spot lights etc. etc. I suppose I lack the skill to do it all at the same time so this is just a step I need to take.
But my next step, and here is the disclaimer that I should have mentioned to save your time, is to now engineer this thing as a cohesive and planned composition.
And damn this composition is going to be a challenge. And A LOT of painting coming my way uhoh. I hope I haven't planned a stupidly complex idea here. But my next step along with composition is simplify.

  1. simplify
  2. composition

Also I didn't mean for my previous concepts of the far Eastern buildings to be fantasy. I see now how they are totally ambiguous looking. My genre was always sci-fi. So I'm glad its finally looking more sci-fi/"industrial".

But I intend to do everything you suggest. Use every tool to help the composition. Use every spot light, depth and smokey atmosphere trick, every smoke angle and every fragment of architecture for the focal point.

I also haven't decided on a focal point. You got any ideas? I was thinking a: a temple structure
a main building of some sort
a landing pad for a flying ship
it could even be some major exhaust flames creating cool lighting

I don't know.

  1. focal point
  2. simplify
  3. composition
Sep '17

I should probably always plan the composition and focal point from the beginning though. Damn. That step was almost useless. Well, I guess it highlighted that I clearly don't know what my focal point is. So I need to improve that. I guess I'm learning, failing and exploring all at once here. Good to write these thoughts down because they were murky at the back of my mind. Need to focus better. Rambling now sorry :smiley: