Well, this one's easy. Congratulations, you've caught the Simple Pikip-- wait, you mean I can't just say that and leave? But like... have you
looked at it? Well. Damn.
Jokes aside, we're back with another spectacular work from the resident VeloJello. On ths one, we've got a realistic Pikipek touching down on a branch with a vast forest spreading in the background. I'm going to start in the back and work my way forward on this one again, because your backgrounds are always just great starting points.
This is one the most simple but also spectacular backgrounds I've seen from you! Drawing the tops of forests, especially on hills, is
hard. It's one of those things where you can't go too detailed or it looks weird, but you also can't go too sparse because then it doesn't look like the tops of trees. You've nailed that middle ground perfectly here. You've got these general, fluffy swaths that have the randomness of the tops of trees. Your highlights and shadows really create this background--you butt dark bottoms against light tops, which creates clear layers in the greenery. Your spotty shading perfectly mimics the irregular shadows cast by clumps and bunches of leaves. The parts I keep looking at the most are your highlights near the back. You use these little dots of brighter color that just perfectly communicate flashes on individual bunches of leaves. The yellow tones in that light also give me the impression that the sun is low and rising, like on a crisp morning.
This works well on your leaves, shiny and bright in the foreground. The branch has a beautiful undershading that communicates not only what I presume to be a sunrise, but also the height of whatever tree and hill this Pikipek is landing on--it's so high up that the light touches more of the bottom of the branch than the top. This is a really great way to give the scene a sense of enormity even though we're focusing on such a tiny subject.
The details of your branch are lovely--you have a mixture of subtle and not-so-subtle ridges that helps perfectly form the natural gnarled-ness of the branch. Your highlights on these dips and ridges really cements the irregularity of its surface. Its shape is very organic, but still sturdy and rigid, as we'd hope it to be for the Pikipek's sake! You have a nice variation in your leaves--a couple of ones curled over themselves, and all going in different directions. No two of your in-focus leaves look the same, which gives the viewer great, small details to look at. Your shading of them is lovely--you use a dark outline on the shaded parts, and lighter outlines on the glistening portions.
What a bird. You've scaled the exaggerated, cartoon proportions of a Pikipek back to something more realistic and more akin to that of a Blue Jay's, and it looks great. Your bird proportions are lovely. You've chosen a beak size that looks realistic, but still says "hey, that's a large beak." You've got a nice dappling at the edges of the red, white, and black on the head that lets it blend realistically. You've also positioned and sized the eyes in a way that passes off the largeness of it as realistic, which is a feat! Wings are spot-on anatomy-wise. I can see the Marginal coverts where they tip into the alula, and the primary coverts blended into the white beneath. I can also see the angular and size division in where the primaries shift into the secondaries on both wings.
The only nitpick I could probably make on this one is the translation of the tail--Pikipek's art shows a practically pinpoint base of a tail. While unrealistic, I think you could have shrunk the top edge of that tail a bit more. But that's honestly a minute suggestion! You've got most of the rest of it. Knobby toe ends? Check. The weird little ridges on bird legs? Check. Bird coke nails? Check.
One of the few things I find off anatomy-wise is the wristy areas of the legs. You have them bending more like canine-y joints than bird ones. Which is honestly understandable, because birds have these weird alien legs that honestly don't belong on this earth. Here are some references,
one of an example of the leg that's grabbing the branch, one of the one curling upward, and
another of the one curling upward. For the one curling upward, birds typically don't bend their wrists down and back that sharply--the angle of the top claws don't seem to go past 90 degrees much at all, and when they do, they have a singular crook to do so. Yours treats the wrist as more of like a paw, as a central pad where the rest joint from.
Additionally, I think our right leg starts too far back and to the right. Since we can see the slightest bit of things like the other side of the beak and face tapering off, as well as far-side feathers on the crest and breast, the pose looks to be a profile view that's tilted just slightly toward us. That said, I think our right leg is too far to the right for the angle. If we look at the small crook where it starts and compare it to where the left leg's joint is hidden behind the claw, it looks like a lot of distance. It might just be perception, but I think it's something to look into. Like I said, birds are weird, spindly, alien creatures that probably shouldn't exist. You did pretty well with that considered.
The lighting on your bird is just as fantastic as everywhere else. You have a grand sense of color, and you've used a great highlight color that's warm like the sun but still blends with the greens. You've blended green into the shadows of the wings, and lightly into the shadows of the black feathers and the legs. The only thing I can see lighting-wise is a little bit of inconsistency with where you have highlights and where you don't. The branch is shaded from underneath and to the left. You have highlight outlines on places like the coverts of the back wing and the head and beak, but they're missing from spots like the sun-facing feathers on the back wings and the breast plummage. You have a little bit of shading on the left side of the tail feathers, but I'm missing what would make that light less bright and pronounced as the shading on top of our left wing. This also seems to be the case on the raised end crook of the branch, which is lacking the bright outlines that the rest of the branch has.
That raises the question of if my first impression of the lighting was correct or not, though with the way sunlight is always kind of far-reaching and a little ambiguous, perhaps it works either way! I think it's something you'd have to try, because it could be possible that adding more of the highlights might be over-doing it. It's something to experiment with if you feel like doing touch-ups!
Another tiny thing is that there's this spot between the base of the beak and the chest plummage that I can't quite tell what it is. It's round, and too green to be a part of the plummage's other side. Pikipek doesn't seem to have an expanded throat or anything similar. Clarifying that small detail basically makes this perfect or something, idk haha.
Overall, great piece, great work,
Pikipek mega uber captured. I wish I could give you more than just a Simple for this. Solid work.
Originally Posted by VeloJello
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