Forest's Curse

They say when you chop a tree down in the forest, you should replace it with another... Trevenant may be able to help with that.



Pokemon Drawn for: Phantump
Pokemon Difficulty Level: Medium
Medium: Manga Studio 5

Proof is my signature, also bonus if you wanna see progress...

Spoiler

 

Very awesome drawing! The colours and foreshortening makes this jump out at the viewer, undoubtedly what you were going for.

 

Thanks! And yep, was going for some foreshortening. I'm also pretty new to "lineless" art, so this isn't perfect, but I think it turned out pretty good.

 

I think this is the oldest un-curated art. So, claim!

 

I love the way you brought Trevenant to life in this picture.
The official sprite:



...is kinda cool-looking, but lifeless. Its only distinct facial feature is that eye, so it doesn't get to display much emotion. Your Trevenant, on the other hand, is downright menacing. Here are just a selection of the things I think you did right in your art piece:

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, my favorite part of the picture is the way you breathed life into an otherwise static Pokemon. I think the main reason you were able to create such a menacing expression is the way you repurposed the first black segment of his trunk into a mouth. There are a couple of nice touches that really sold this feature. First of all, you reshaped the jagged edge of the trunk so that it looks more like teeth, and you turned them upward in order to make it look like a smile. Secondly, you turned his eye from an orange circle into a glowing orb that extends into the mouth region. I think the touch of red there is really what separates that area from the other black segment of the trunk and makes it look more mouth-like. In the original, the black segments are, again, kinda cool, but they're really throwaway features. You turned that throwaway feature into the star of the piece by giving Trevenant an expression, and I really applaud you for that.

Compared to the sprite, you also made Trevenant look much more tree-like. For one thing, you used a variety of colored streaks up and down the trunk to give him the illusion of bark, or a grainy wood-like feel. Furthermore, your Trevenant's body parts, particularly the legs, look much more gnarled. In-game, the woody portions of Trevenant's body are still pretty clean and symmetrical, but your Trevenant looks like an actual tree from some haunted forest that has been possessed by a ghost. You've got knobby lumps and broken branches that really add in a level of realism that just isn't present in-game.

I particularly love your use of color here. I've already touched on the way your orange glow added to the picture, but the rest of the purples and greens are important too. The purple is your dark color, and it makes up Trevenant's body and the sky in the background. The greens are your light color, and they're used for the leaves and ghosts. I'm sort of imagining what would happen if I came across this guy in a dark forest. First, I wouldn't see anything. Then, his eye lights up, which is horrifying in and of itself. Now that there's light, I can see the purple bits against the dark sky, but I don't have an outline so I can't tell what this thing is, only that I want to run away as fast as I can. Then the bright lights hit as the ghosts stream out from behind him, revealing the full terror. You've captured the scene at this exact point, where the action is fully in effect. The light from the ghosts plays off the outlines of Trevenant's hands and head, "revealing" those extremeties. It immediately calls our attention to just how massive and scary the Pokemon is, while the looming trunk, viewed from below, adds to the illusion of size.

To continue this point, I think you mentioned that you are new to lineless art. I can see you played with the highlights and shadows around the edges of Trevenant's body. I can see two distinct "types" of highlights/shadows that you used. The first kind is closer to an actual outline. This kind is pretty clear on the left horn and especially the hand on the left side of the image. These highlights very closely follow the shape of the body parts. I think given the context (the ghosts illuminating his body from behind), these fit the picture pretty well. I do think the highlight on that hand might be a bit much, though. Considering the hand is "behind" the bush on his wrist from a lighting perspective, I don't think it would be so universally illuminated. On the other hand (heh), that claw has the brightest highlight in the piece because that's the part that's reaching out as if to grab the viewer, so it gets to be more prominent. You accomplished that somewhat with the increased size, so I think you may be able to play with the lighting to make it look a little more realistic on that hand without taking it out of the spotlight... so to speak.

You also made use of some more natural light and shadows that don't take the place of outlines. The part I'd particularly like to point out is the shadow that separates Trevenant's legs from his body. It serves the same function as an outline, since it helps us to tell what part of the tree is the trunk and what part is the leg. To that point, you also used the grain of the wood to distinguish separate body parts. Overall I think you did a good job of creating an object without having to use an outline.

There's only one detail in your picture that I'd say could use some work. It's that space between his two front legs.

It looks like a butt.

It's sort of an awkward feature that probably couldn't have been done away with no matter how hard you tried. Actually, I think all of the really important aspects of the image are above that bit, so this is a place where I might have even just hidden it off-screen. Butt to each their own.

Grade

As I said before, this is a really astounding piece. It's absolutely worth 75/45, at least, so Phantump is yours!

 

I ain't even mad, I just started dying laughing.

Thanks so much for the review, Elrond! Claimin' my tree.