Thread: [Cash] Idyllic Day

Shout-out to last-second checks that allowed me to find out that Mareep is a 'mart Pokemon. Going for however much money I can get for this wooly one! Lighting, color, and technique critiques will be especially appreciated. <3

Originally Posted by VeloJello

Shout-out to last-second checks that allowed me to find out that Mareep is a 'mart Pokemon. Going for however much money I can get for this wooly one! Lighting, color, and technique critiques will be especially appreciated. <3

Claim dis beautiful thing

Alright, so just to start off--this stuff's goigeous, goil. As always, you create the prettiest stuff. Idyllic Day is a wonderful title for this one--the work looks peaceful, hopeful, and what any of us would want.

I'm going to reverse things a bit, and start off in the back and move forward!

Your sky is gorgeous--you have a lovely, pale blue color that's just bright enough to communicate a pleasant day while not being too bright to take away from your subject. You've also chosen more of a light, bright teal instead of a pure blue, which works great with the green of the rest of your work. The subtle gradient from darker to lighter not only gives the sky a little depth, but also helps your light sun contrast on the darker blues behind it. Your clouds are spot-on, too--you have a spectacular sense of form, even with the most amalgamous of objects. They're appropriately fluffy, and their shapes are just random enough to mimic the actual random, cotton-bally nature of actual clouds. You have a defined swathe of darkess on the bottom that gives the clouds the dimension of shadow on their undersides, and enough shading scattered throughout to round out the puffs.

The greens in your grassy background are delightful. Just looking for a moment, I can see at least four or five different shades in the lit parts alone, all at different points of saturation and brightness. Your commitment to the tufts themselves is spectacular, also--I see consistent smatterings of these tufts all in different shades across the board, telling us that this is some fluffy, very graze-able grass for this Mareep. The only small nitpick I can make here is where the grass doesn't completely interrupt the horizon line enough on the right side. A lot of the edge of the base stroke of that dark green is still visible, and it's just a little too uniform and flat of a line to be convincing with how fluffy everything else is. Filling even some grass tips a tiny bit more along there would help break that uniformity a little.

Onto your Mareep! You've done a fantastic realistic interpretation of this animal. Its skin color is more of a realistic teal, which also helps match it to the green light that would be reflecting all over it. I'll be completely honest--I've never thought of the things on the side of Mareep's head as ears! I've always thought they were some kind of horn. Looking at Ampharos, though... yeah, probably ears, haha. Either way, you've done a lovely job with the ears. That sort of rounded, cupped ears of bovine/equine-esque animals is hard to pull off, but you've got it here. Your lighting, as well as the slight inward bow of the middle black stripe, help communicate that cupped surface. The only complaint I can begin to have here is that I feel like the interior of the ear would be darker. Even with less drastic light sources, the insides of those ears get dark very quickly, even when not cupped as drastically. Deepening that shading inside would help give the inside a little more dimension, too, since the small swath of yellow above that sketchy dark line of shadow is a little flat.

Your facial shading is awesome, and really fills out its head. If there is one thing I'd look at anatomy-wise here, it's the shape of the face. Baby sheep have these really scrunched muzzles and a big, domed forehead. As they grow older, they grow out of the domed forehead, but they still have a very sloping and triangular head shape. If you look at Mareep's art, they mimicked this with a very rounded triangle for its head. Vertically pudging in the end of its face a little more would bring it truer both to nature and its art!

Otherwise, great. You got the nose, blending Game Freak's unrealistic slits with the realistic shape of a sheep's nose. You've got the jowls curved in a great little smile, too, that really helps communicate the emotion you're going for here. The glimmering eyes have beautiful shading and depth, and I like the highlight on the lid and the brow, and the shadows in the dip to the right of the eye. You've shaded the chin nicely to give the apperance of the undersides of its jaws, which works well--that's always one of the hardest parts in poses where a head is tilted upward!

Your wool all around is spectacular. Wool, while typically looking white, is a bit of a warmer white that starts showing a lot of yellow in its shadows, and you have that here. A lot of the same things you did well on the clouds applies here--everything is fluffy in just enough of a random way, layered slightly but still ambiguous enough to give our minds the right idea. I also like the touch of the darker spot in the wool right beneath the head. The only critique I can give on any part of this one is the wool of the head. Mareep's curl is fairly uniform, but stylistically, you fluffy wool doesn't match much with the curl of that same wool you've got here. I thinking giving that curl a little more fluffiness would help it match the rest, and also keep it from having as much flat-ish space in its centers. Either way, it still looks great, and that's practically a nit-pick, haha.

Tail shading--great. You've used the stripes to curl it forward in space, as well as some shading. The ball's shading is just as gorgeous as the eyes, and I'm glad you've used similar palettes there to tie it all in. You've even got a small spot of pale blue reflecting on it. Great attention to detail. Legs are equally nice--the shading is beautiful and the shape of hte hooves is great.

Overall, a freaking awesome work, Velo. You meet all of the requirements for Demanding--all art elements very strong, with skillful execution of composition, lighting/shading, good contrast, and organic form. Those are all there, and on top of that, you've got a great background and an apparent emotion and story. Your background is simple, but it is detailed--small things like the frequent grass tufts, the gradation in shading, and the detail you put into those clouds is plenty enough to bring it up there. I'm happy to award you 40k at the Demanding Rank. Enjoy your riches, Ms. Moneybags!