Thread: [ALOLA] They See Me Bouncin'

Welcome to URPG, Negrek! I'll claim this for curation and hopefully have it done soon!

@Negrek : Done!

This is a really cute picture of Bounsweet! There are lots of good things I’d like to talk about, and I’ve got a few pointers for your future work! This is a really great first drawing. The colors are vibrant, you used lighting effects to create highlights and shadows, and I can see you put plenty of effort into creating a nice background.

I want to start out by talking about the shape and pose of Bounsweet’s body. In your picture, Bounsweet has pretty wide hips, while it’s really supposed to be more circular. I think part of the reason it looks that way in your picture is because of the pose. I like that you took the initiative to pose it in a way that’s different from a lot of the official art and other artwork you’d see around the Internet. Bounsweet seems to be sliding down the blade of grass, which is why its “skirt” is billowing up around its hips. I would just recommend paying a little more attention to the shape of the body underneath those moving parts. It looks like you extended Bounsweet’s hips to meet the edge of the white petals, but the petals should probably extend well past its hips if they’re lifting up like that. I’d recommend trying out an art program with layers, if you don’t have one already. That way, you could try drawing the shape of Bounsweet’s body, and then draw the white petals on top, without having to worry about messing up what’s underneath.

Next, I’d like to talk a little about the way you shaded your piece. I like that you put in some effort to show the shading under Bounsweet’s leaves and across its face. Mostly I just want to add that there are probably more places where there should be shadows. For example, only two of Bounsweet’s three head leaves have shadows underneath them. Based on the way those two leaves are shaded, the sunlight appears to be coming from above Bounsweet. They’re also shaded on the right side rather than the left. Since we mostly only see the left side of the third leaf, I would expect most of it to be shaded. In addition, I think that the blades of grass underneat Bounsweet should also have shadows on them from its body.

Finally, I want to talk about the background a little bit. I love the effort you put into making the dandelion behind Bounsweet have so many layers of color. I think the blades of grass may have gotten away from you, though. There are blades kind of all over the place, but the lines don’t really match up so it’s hard to tell whether any of the blades are connected, like the one that reaches all the way from the bottom-left edge and seems like it maybe continues to the top-right? This is another place where layers could come in handy, since you could connect those lines and turn it into a full blade of grass.

The other thing I’d like to point out in the background is the actual color behind everything. It’s kind of… drab, which doesn’t really fit the rest of the piece. Since we’re looking from a point of view that appears parallel to the ground, I’d expect there to just be more grass behind Bounsweet. If we’re looking from below Bounsweet, then we should probably see the sky. The gray color doesn’t really fit either of those possibilities, however, so it stands out.

Overall

This was a really good first picture, and I have no problem giving this a 35/35, so Bounsweet is captured! Also, this qualifies for the Alola challenge, so you can post in this thread to claim an additional $5,000!