Sunset Ralts

I would like to Submit this to capture Ralts please

Difficulty - Hard
Target - Ralts
Points needed - 55

 

Claim!

 

Hi Ghost! Sorry about the delay! Anyway Ralts's two final evolutions are certainly good pokemon and are very powerful. As a result of its future strength, Ralts is a hard rank mon. I do think that this is your first venture into something that is a step up from the requirements from the medium rank, as most, or all of your captures so far have been medium. Nevertheless, let us begin!

Overall/First Impressions:

I see that your color choices are bit more informed and I like sunset scenes they are very colorful and generally much more interesting than day scenes. However, it can get a bit trope-y so do watch out! There are all times of day and lighting situations that will help you work on making a story. Right now it appears that the little Ralts is trying to find some dinner or has just found a berry it will presumably eat for dinner. Whether or not it was just picked or it was just there randomly in the scene is a bit unclear, but the fact remains simple, I guess, is that Ralts has its food!

Pokemon Likeness:

I do like the scene and you have a clear understanding of its basic form. At first glance it appeared accurate. I compared what you drew with official artwork and I do see a minor problem: its neck is too thick. Ralts has a tiny neck, and in its official artwork almost looks like a bobble head toy. It is a small and childlike.

Technique:

While the scene is cute and fun, I am going to say at first glance that I am a bit nervous about awarding you a ralts. While I see that you have included some minor shading, greater color variety, I feel like this is more rushed than your previous work which were medium rank and some were rendered, quite frankly, better.

There are several things I think you can tweak and improve on before I award you a Ralts:

> Outlines:

Outlines are fine for lower rank mons but they get in the way of making a scene look more and more realistic. While outlines are drawn in initial stages to work on other things and to show us where one object ends and another begins, one can achieve that same effect with color and value differences. Your subject, Ralts, is flattened by the rigid, black outlines of its body. You can include outlines, and often artists hide them by changing their color along with the form rather than keeping them straight black.

> Shading:

Besides the very nice rendering of the head and the cast shadow of the tree, the shading in this work is rather lazy. While rather high key (lots of light colors) I still can get a feel of Ralts's hemispherical head. However, I am a little upset at the rigidity of the work as a whole. The shadows on its body are hardly different than the part of it in sun with a very sharp contour denoting what's in shadow and what's in the spotlight. Hard shadows are generally reserved for metallic objects and harsh lighting. The lighting of an afternoon (unless ralts is facing the sun which wouldn't line up with the tree's cast shadow) is rather soft. It is the middle of the day when the lighting is hard and crass. Photographers flock to take photos in the late afternoon and early mornings because that is the best lighting of the day. Here, the shading looks as if ralts's was made of boxes.

> Background:

Your background is a bit more generic than in your works. There's a random mountain smack dab in the center and there is a tree off to the side, some grass and nothing really in between. The rendering is minimal throughout the background with really the most interesting part of the background as the cast shadow of the tree. I'm not really sure what is happening with the mountain shading.

I've searched the internet and tried to find the least gimmicky, photoshopped, or photo taken through an orange filter and this is the best I could find:

Spoiler

This is a gimmicky sunset picture that has been photoshopped to something completely fake:

Spoiler

As well as these are completely fake because the photographer puts a filter on the camera lens to make everything look orange:

Spoiler

or this one

I really hope you were using a reference because the latter two are traps that most people who are new art fall victim to thinking that's good. And while pretty, the first one clearly demonstrates a sense of atmospheric perspective-- the concept that things get more or less duller and smaller as they are far off in the distance. Your mountain tries to do this, but it is a bit incongruous with the rest of your scene and looks more or less placed there to differentiate your subject from the multicolored sky. If you do want to include the mountains, the sunset, and even the ground, there has to be some sort of visual connection which will integrate the two. Have you seen images of the American Southwest, how huge mountains seemingly come out of the flat ground?

You sunset is shaded a bit strangely as well. The colors are neatly sectioned off. Let the colors blend and mix! You don't have to shade lighter to read as lighter! In fact, colors carry values of their own! Warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow pop out and cool colors such as green, blue and violet tend to recede. Yellow is lighter than red and subsequently you can shade or draw a pretty sunset by keeping the colors the same thickness!

I'm really not quite sure why you drew your grass so light, either.

Conclusion:

I think your main problem is that everything is so neat. Loosen your drawing up a little and take some risks! Your shading and coloring is just so sectioned off and it makes everything feel a bit disjointed. Ralts is a hard rank and I think that this drawing needs a bit more work before I'm comfortable awarding you your little psychic creature. 50/55 Ralts is not captured!

 

Fixed the sky best i could ( erased the darker lines best i could)
some of the colours wouldn;t go darker using my new pencils due to i used the older crappy pencils on this drawing and they don;t erase easy without a good eraser so some bits will be darker then others becasue soft oil pencils and led pencils are not a good mix.

 

Hey, @GhostlyGlaceon ! There are some improvements here I see!

Colored pencils are definitely tough, but I believe in you! A technique that may help you blend a little easier is going in circular motions with a very light hand. Colored pencils are definitely a marathon and not a sprint, so they do often take a long time to get a nice, smooth blend. Crossing over the colors in the sky and other large areas of color will help you gradient between different shades when they mix too.

As far as lighting goes with the setting sun, I think you could definitely incorporate that into your highlights. A prime example of where this would be easiest is on the bright spots on the rocks. What if you put a little red-orange glow on it--where you've already left a bald spot? That's what color the light is right now, and that will soften it right up while maintaining that late afternoon feel.

For shading on/around the Pokemon itself, hone in where two "objects" or "sections" intersect--those are going to be darker, in places where the light source is blocked out. The darkest areas are always between two objects, so places like where the rocks and the Ralts hit the ground will be much darker than some cast shadows. On the Ralts body, some place where light is being blocked is between the legs, underneath the arm, at the back of the neck, and under the "hat." Some blue or purple-tinted shadow in these areas I think will really make Ralts pop and become more 3-d.

I really like the texture on the tree and the grass looks way more in-place now.

 

Okay, I got a little more specific and drew on your image with Paint (forgive my mouse scribbles).

The black parts are where shadow would be darker--where things intersect.

The gray parts and were you should help show the pieces are more rounded since they bend. They curve away from the light/are blocked out slightly due to positioning of the body. You did a good job on the pink horns showing how the bottom part was darker than the top. Apply that same thing to the rest of the body and it'll pop for sure!

 

Here is the Updated version ... Thank you Winter for your tips, took mea bit to register what you were saying but i got it eventually. @WinterVines also its ready for regrade @juliorain

 

Hi ghost I'll try and be more specific next time! Don't know what happened! I can tell you have worked on this a lot, defining Ralt's form better with shadow. I am a little bothered by the way that the sky is colored--



You seemed to have colored it like it was bumpy as it we were seeing like courregated metal rather than a flat open sky. I would definitely aim for your sky to be colored in more like what you have around the berry Ralts is catching or tossing:



Your mountain still looks placed there. I shown you a bunch of pictures on how to integrate it. Mountains generally take the shape of cones (with of course deformities due to nature). But often land surrounding them rises up to meet it. They're usually not alone as well, but for now I think I am more concerned about your sky.

While your grass is darker, I didn't mean to gloss over it with red. I meant that I think the piece would benefit more if you had used a deeper green color. The natural color of bright green grass is the color and value of your grass in the shade. It works a lot better now that you have put some darker warmer grays in the grass, but the color of the grass still is a bit distracting.

Seriously if you have a question and want clarification, please ask me! If you tweak the sky and the color of the grass, I'll definitely approve your Ralts! You're so close!!!! 52/55!!!

 

Updated and hopfully you love it so much XD

 

Wow!!!!!!! I knew you could do it! I'm sure the grass seemed trivial but everything looks whole! Ralts is finally captured! 55/55!