[ART/STORY] dreaming of adventure !

Hi! I know I'm posting this without Weir's part, but we are both going out of town tomorrow and I wanted to make absolute sure I was able to post my part! I just downloaded and used PaintToolSAI for the first time with this one! I like how it turned out.

EDIT: Weir super busy and wasn't able to make the deadline. That's okay, I'll just be making this for capture instead of for the event!

The story will be about a little Ferroseed with blue thorns who works with his partner on a farm, but secretly longs for adventure!

Click for full size!


Capture, or however it works! C: Signature at bottom left.

 

claimed

 

aaannnnddd Curation is a go~!


First Impression:

Whoa. I’m a bit then aback by this, with how relaxing and pleasing it is to my eye. I love look at scenic pictures like this and it makes you want to look up with them at such a beautifully lit sky. There may not be much going on, but I feel a deeper meaning coming from the picture as a whole, an almost longing one, which fits the title of this image.

Form:

There isn’t a lot to its form, but Ferroseed definitely follows what seems to be a strict pattern. From a quick glance, I’d say you’d hit the nail on the head, getting its shape down, the carved lines in its body and the distinguishable spikes sticking out of its body. I didn’t need to pull up a reference or images to know exactly what Pokemon you were going for and for that, I think you did an excellent job! I especially enjoy that you attempted to go for its shiny form. However, upon closer inspection, there are a few things that would probably catch anyone off guard with its design.

First off, in addition to its “thorns”, Ferroseed has other little black spots placed all over its body. Since we’re seeing this pokemon from behind, its a bit harder to find reference points for it unless you’re looking at its game sprites. What makes Ferroseed different are the placement of its black spots, but I don’t happen to see any on your depiction of it, which does leave some of the areas a bit bare. As mentioned before, since this is an image from behind, we don’t get to see it’s face, so other areas do have to compensate for that a little bit.

The other thing that isn’t too noticeable unless you’re staring at its images, is the position of its spikes. From what I can tell, you went the visually pleasing route and it does look really good, but every image I have found has its spots aligned in the exact same fashion. Take a look at this. In this image, you can clearly see that after the top section, the next two sections have their spikes in the same position before turning in the final row to follow the top. It’s a very deliberate and set design, and I could find nothing where those rows would “rotate”. In fact, the whole body rotates at once from what I was able to find. But aside from those things, the Ferroseed look great and there’s nothing else amiss about it. The shape of its body is right, the shape of its spikes are nicely done and its ridges are uniform and clean. Overall, a great depiction of it!


Background/Foreground:

So both the background and foreground elements, from a glance appear to be pretty simple. It appears to be either sunset or sunrise, a bit hard to tell in general for me, but is well done either way. In the foreground, we se that Ferroseed is sitting in a patch of grass, possibly even swaying in the wind based on layout of it. Upon closer inspection, there is a lot of work put into this sky, with all the different hues swirling around in it. At the top of the image, you have it dark, with a sprinkle of stars in and around it before gradually adding lighter oranges, yellows and reds as you descend towards the surface. You’ve even added what appears to be cirrus clouds following this same path and at the end of it, we see a bright light as though its imitating the sun and is the clear point for the light source in this image. It’s brilliantly and beautifully done and I have to hand it to you for how well each color transitions and then you continued to sprinkle some of those darker colors in to create a sense of realism. Though thats something that would have been mentioned in your technique section haha.

In any case, your other element here is the grass, which is also well done, shaped and is comprised of different width’s and lengths for the grass. You’ve also incorporated different colors into it to give the grass more dimension and bring it to life. Aside from these things, there isn’t much else to bring up about the background other then adding in a few more elements. You mentioned, originally that this was going to be part of a story about a ferroseed who works with his partner on a farm. However, without knowing that tidbit or even reading the story had it been finished, we wouldn’t be able to tell those things just from this image. An image should tell a story without need for explanation. If you still wanted to create that feeling, perhaps you could have incorporated the barn in the distance and maybe his ‘partner’ near it or near the ferroseed. To secretly long for adventure however would be a bit harder to depict exactly, but you get a longing feeling from the picture as it stands, which would have been enough to tell a story. Just something for the future. Overall, love the background you’ve got here.

Line:

There admittedly, isn’t very many ‘lines per say to judge in this image except for maybe the grass and ferroseed itself. In which case, the lines on ferroseed are very clean and distinguishable. They do not appear to merge into other parts of its design and clearly separate themselves from other elements in the picture. The grass is the same, in that its clear separated from the other parts of the image. They do appear to blend into themselves at times or into one large piece at the bottom in some parts of it, but it doesn’t take away from the piece in general. I enjoy that you also used light to show some clear separations between ferroseed and the sky.

Technique:

I’ve already done a lot of talking when its come down to talking about technique, especially in the background section of this curation. I actually already covered most about what I wanted to say about the sky, but there are a few other things I want to add. Now, I’m aware the white spots are most likely meant to be stars, and may have been a last minute add, but I feel as though, in this case, a brush preset would have really helped to sell these as stars. Upon zooming in, some kind of look like random marks and aside from that, there isn’t much too them. If you have Photoshop, bing you have said, i would definitely recommend finding a star brush set, adjusting it in your presets, and then playing around with size to give you something that looks closer to stars. You could even add a dim glow to them and that would have really brought them out.

Another thing I want to commend you on are the clouds you’ve got. Clouds are hard to get right, but you managed to give them that ‘whispy’ look cirrus clouds are known to have. The shapes aren’t completely defined and have areas where you can see through them to the sky, and thats the type of stuff i enjoy seeing. You even took it a step further and used this same technique as a ‘texture’ for the sky as you created the gradient, and at the end it, made it a bit thicker where the Sun would most likely be.

Moving on, Ferroseed is also wonderfully shaded and colored as well. The colors are on point and you’ve even incorporated some of the colors from the light source reflecting onto it. The light color around its edges shows that the front of its body is being heavily lit from the light source whereas the very back is getting very little of it. This is also show on every thorn on its body and through the placement of the shadows from its thorns. You paid a lot of attention to where your light was coming from and its evident in your shading on Ferroseed. I think the thing I like most about it, is that you changed the color of its blue seeds, to match what color it would be surrounded by yellow light.

The last thing I’d like to mention is the grass. I like that you’ve used different greens and yellow in its colors, and also played with opacity, length and even width to create this patch. It looks great overall, but i feel like its a bit too uniform, all flowing in the same direction on either side of the image and in the center. I feel as though some more random placements might have helped it out a bit more. The other thing is that, towards the bottom of the image, the grasses appear to kind of fuse together, which i find a bit weird. Though its also possible the image is lifted above the ground just enough to where it ‘looks’ like they are fused together. It’s not a big issue, but it still seems a bit weird. Grass is tough in any case, but general, a single grass plant will have several blades that stem from it. All in all, it does flow nicely and mimic’s the sky in a sense.

Overall:

Overall, this is a great image and I enjoyed every second staring at it so much its probably burned into my memory, haha. There were some issues as I noted, but Im going to score this a 55/55, just barely capturing your little guy! There was a lot that went into this image, but I hope you ate some of the things I mentioned and continue making more brilliant pieces for the section! Enjoy!