Thread: I Tried Stopping It and I Got Stopped

Claiming that there Girafarig up der

@Gun6

I finally did it, only took me way too damn long. Apologies.

Spoiler:

Form/Detail
The image does not have much detail, but there is a certain beauty in its simplicity. It's very clean, the open space giving a feeling of freedom, though the lack of much else may give a feeling of emptiness in the back. Detail seems to be very focused here, while minimal the spots it exists add emphasis to their existence. The grass seems to be used to focus the viewer’s attention back up towards the pokemon rearing itself towards the vast sky above, which gives a sense of motion and energy, though the face does seem rather passive for such a motion.

Color, Texture, and Shading
There's a nice pastoral feel to this image. The vast majority of the colors are rather cool, with the background featuring light greens and blues. The pokemon’s more apparent warm yellow, pink, and brown add a layer of contrast while not being far too bright to overpower the image. The piercing blue eye, while mixing in with the sky yet contrasting well against the yellow skin.
Shading on this piece, mainly the pokemon, it quite beautiful. It is both simple yet allows the details to show up well with minimal color variation.I really like the front kneecaps, offering both highlights and shadows to give detailed forms. I myself know little about musculature & anatomy, but the details seem quite spot-on. I would have loved to see a bit of texture on the pokemon. I would have imagined girafarig to be a hair-covered pokemon based on its real world origins. It might have added some slight yet welcome variations in the otherwise glossy plasticlike texture girafarig has. The hooves also could have been roughed up, as looking at references I noticed they had growth variations much like horns and fingernails.

Pokemon Anatomy
I really like the amount of realism you put into Girafarig here. I even pulled up images of giraffes for comparison. You have shaded musculature that really pops in all the right places. The ears are really complex while still following the simple forms you have on the rest of the pokemon. The action pose allows for a far more dynamic and energetic image without needing a lot of additional set pieces. There are only a few minor areas to be modified or improved. The ossicones could be a little longer, as they seem short by both official artwork and real giraffe photographs would show. The eye seems very glazed over, a more visible pupil would seem more appropriate as right now the pokemon would almost seem to be blinded by light. I like the tail’s face, he seems so happy yet oblivious.

Environment/Perspective
I think the background is the weakest part of the image. The clouds are really nicely done, and the sky gradient adds a touch of variety. The grass is where it breaks down, as it seems rather cartoony and layered. While it does have a nice color variance to it, the transparency allowing you to see through the tips, and the extreme variance from root to tip, make it seem unrealistic and out of place. There's also not much else for the eye to grab on to. Something else might be to consider adding something on the horizon, as it currently stands the world ends at the rear most layer of grass.

Improvements
I would definitely focus on texture for future pieces, as it can add new levels of detail & realism. Otherwise you have most everything down pat, so good work on everything else.

Results
I think its safe to say that you can have a girafarig.

@Gun6 Hey bud, sorry this took a long time to write, but here is your raltzy boy (or gurl).

Hey gun, your dramatic Ralts is visually arresting; what I mean is that is that the dynamic pose immediately brings me into the work. I really like it when I see you push yourself. I do want to say that I think you went in going with medium rank in mind, but Ralts is a hard ranked pokemon. It might have been medium before it got the fairy typing and its two final evolutions being mega-compatible. This means I will be treating your work at that level. There’s a lot to say because you’ve given me a lot of visual material to work with!

Your work at its very surface is simple, but I believe that you have communicated a lot more than you anticipated. I looked at some of your past works and I noticed that they were very distant or were extremely focused on the subject, so much so it was a little too arresting. I think you found a nice balance in how much you focus you need to put on your subject. The dramatic pose looking straight at the apple is fun and dramatic. It makes you wonder what about that apple is so important to the Ralts. Is it pondering the mysteries of life? Looking for bugs? Proud that it summoned an apple with its psychic powers? I don’t know. There is a bit of mystery which is good, however, I think there is a tad too much mystery, as in there is nothing else in the image to give me a hint about what it is the ralts is pondering and so I must rely on my imagination to fill in those details. More on that later.

Onto your Ralts: I think you nailed its form. Ralts is a child pokemon, so it would make sense that you need a proportionally large head in comparison to its body. The whole evolution line has similarities to human anatomy, so it was important that you stayed to true of our own capabilities in posing when drawing your Ralts. It is quite clear from its musculature that you paid careful attention while leaving its hands and arms slightly more sinewy and ambiguous. However, there are parts that show your amazing command in your drawing technique. I like the little detail on its shoulder or how you differentiated its scrawny legs under its …fur …tunic? Those details make everything feel real. When I started to look beyond the body, I was a little disappointed about what I saw. I think with the level of rendering that you did on its body should have been continued along its arms and even defined its hands better, as they are much less considered. They’re of inconsistent length that doesn’t necessarily follow any sort of known musculature. I’d like you to slow down there, because the arms are getting fatter when they should be getting thinner or there are parts of his hands below the apple that see to randomly drop. You didn’t give me enough details for me to guess that was a loose-fitting sleeve, or its pinky finger was falling off its hand.

I do have some problems with its hair and horns, however. With all of that glowing over its detailing I think the hair on my right side (facing the computer) and horns look rushed compared to everything else. The shading needs to be reversed on that tuft of hair because it would be catching the light from your extremely clear source. I think you wanted to make it mostly in shadow from the horns, but their cast shadow would go beyond. Instead you gave me a gradient fill that flattens that area. The horns’ shading is rushed. While you got the lighting correct, the roughness is nowhere else on Ralts, so It makes it seem like you forgot about them. The other tuft of hair rocks; I can really feel the three dimensionality, and its lightness, even with the soft shadows. I do think the fine detailing from the bangs could have been extended across the head rather than simplified into a green blob, however.

I dislike the gradient filling with the shading just below on its face; I think Ralts’s face would completely be in shadow, especially if its hair is as billowy as you drew it. The mouth needs to be much darker, I think to be more believable. I get that you were trying to go for the whole lack of outline look, but the lack of musculature in Ralts’s face stands in stark contrast to its body. I noticed that you can shade spheres and sphere-like objects, as evidenced by that fine shading on your apple.

I do think that its pose, while dramatic, is a bit confusing. I am not sure if you were for an ant’s eye perspective which means you’re looking at things from below, which skews everything larger below and shorter at the top. At the same time, I think you could have been going for that dramatic fan blowing effect if your tunic/dress thing was caught in the wind (have you seen those pictures of Marilyn Monroe, or really any beauty product ad??) No matter what, the weight distribution would be horribly out of balance and Ralts would have to use its psychic powers to stand that way without breaking its back or tipping over. My mind can’t decide what is going on because you didn’t really include any information that my mind can take into context and therefore makes think you weirdly skewed Ralts’s lower half. (Ralts’s hair isn’t windswept, nor is it smaller at the top). Having more context would really help clarify that! You’ve taken such great pain to define its body, the ripples in its hair, or the shine on the apple that the lower body looks hashed together.

I am glad that you didn’t use outlines! That was a daring move on your part since a lot of your previous works and some others in this thread are reliant on them for them. I think outlines would have taken the drama out of the scene and would have flattened it unnecessarily.

I think it goes without saying that you have a solid understanding of form and light. Everything besides the places I’ve mentioned makes me believe it is there. I am a little upset that the apple isn’t darker. Red delicious apples are almost blood-red, the stems very dark burnt umber, and their leaves are wilted, dark dull green. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to carry the red and green color scheme from Ralts into the apple as they happen to be generally the same hue and value as its hair and horns. While I understand it relates the subjects thematically, it makes me think of the apple like a cartoonish symbol of one rather than it holding an actual apple. You went to such great pain of making Ralts realistic, it doesn’t quite add up and distracts me from that astonishing shading on that apple.

Since you’ve included such a dark background I don’t think the soft coloration of everything else really matches as much as you would have intended it to. Its like you have dramatic daylight on a dark purple background. It gives a weird appearance that I wish I had more context to place Ralts in. While the soft purplish shadows sort of tie Ralts in with the abstract background, it doesn’t work as much since the dark blacks are nowhere to be seen on Ralts. Is it on stage? If so, then sharper and darker shadows would be needed. I want to see it somewhere rather than just on an abstract, purple space. This ties into the mysterious aspect earlier: you have all this dramatic build up, but I’m left wanting more, but not like as a cliffhanger, but more like the actor just walked onstage during the first scene of the play.

It also goes without saying that you have an incredible amount of experience, so I’m surprised that I had to bring up a number of these issues. For a three-hour drawing I think that is impressive, but it isn’t quite enough for a hard rank capture and I think having the impression that Ralts was a medium capture clouded your judgement. Honestly, if you make a living background or work on several issues that I have pointed out earlier, I would be really happy to award you a Ralts, but I don’t think that Ralts is quite captured right now!