[ALOLA] The Knighting of John

Spoiler

Title: The Knighting of John
Alternatively: The Execution of John/The Yielding of John (Ty @BlueTowel)
Target: Bounsweet
Rank: Simple (35+)
Alolan Art Challenge woop! Spoilered since it's huge. Used crayons and pastels again, with pencil for the outlines. I know I botched the colors on this and having a sucky phone camera didn't help, but oh well. Elongated Tsareena's limbs a bit so it could hold the sword more naturally. Or at least I tried to make it so. Practically predicted @Johnbdm; becoming a ref tbh. And no john I'm keeping the Bounsweet >:/

 

Claim.

 

Can somebody play some royal music here? Nah. We good. Bounsweet is a rather, erm, interesting pokemon that evolves into a highly competitive pokemon and in some senses outclasses its other grass type neighbor, Lurantis. Let's see if you catch that little ball of fruit.

Presentation: You yourself mentioned, "botched the colors on this and having a sucky phone camera didn't help" so I don't know what to say. Adjusting the colors and the lighting (even if they are via automatic tools) can be done in a jiffy and the colors would bring out everything. Right now it is really gray. I recommend the auto white balance tool in GIMP as it literally does everything for you and even increases the contrast and brightness to usually acceptable levels. That literally takes only 30 seconds. Coming from an experienced URPG artist, this is a very simple thing. Phone photos can actually look good if you just take the time to edit them. I'm actually going to deduct points becuase the content of your work is great.

Technique: I can't really tell the colors, personally, but perhaps you could have gotten a wider variety of greens. You can hatch colors with crayons like colored pencils to get more nuanced color. You style is virtually the same as your last piece, which is OK for simple rank but I'm going to start to get a little testier at higher ranks. I think light and shadow are very difficult concepts to master, but your composoiton saves you. Tsareena has a very elegant pose and John the Snivy leads us into the page.

I'm wishing that the background was not so sloppily drawn. Often with architectural scenes, wonky lines make everything feel uncomfortable or cartoonish/ sloppy. I get that this is a wonderfully composed scene, which already surpasses what is simple and borders medium. I do believe you could have worked on the floor as well. Tiles appear to get smaller as they go back in space, usually if you have the tiles be the generally same size throughout, you get the appearance that the plane of the floor is the plane of the paper, which is usually not the intended effect. For a simple ranking, however, I'll let the floor and the casual treatment of the architecture slide more because the figures are drawn very well. There are minor issues like Snivy's head being slightly too big or from the general lack of detail like the cartoon hands.

Conclusion: Everything aside from presentation is fine. I'm not going to approve this until I can see a better quality image. Simple is where presentation is beginning to matter and this sets a dangerous precedent for newbies coming in, curious about what it takes to do art in URPG. Come back to me with a picture in better lighting and I'll approve it. 33/35

 

@juliorain;
Fixed up the lighting as per your suggestion! Spoilered again cuz huuge.

Spoiler

 

Helped it a lot! It's a catch! 40/35

 

Thanks! Guess I'll claim the Alola Art Challenge Bonus as well.

 

Whoops, sorry, yes, it does qualify for the alolan art challenge!