Thread: Flabebe Gets Patriotic [JULY]

Pokemon: Flabebe
Difficulty: Medium

[On DeviantArt] - If you're not a Curator but you've got a comment.

I'll claim this~

Curation is a go~!

Let’s start off with my first impression.

First Impression:

Ohhhh, I really like what they’ve done with the flower to incorporate the July theme in here! The flower looks good and I love the way it was shaded along with the water! I love the little american flag too, so I’ll start off by saying good job and you’ve definitely gotten the theme going here in this work.

Form:

Alright, I’m going to start off by saying I could immediately tell this was Flabebe at first glance. It looks relatively like the little flower Pokemon between it’s actual body and the flower it lives on. Taking a closer look however, there’s a couple of things I want to mention. First off, the shape of Flabebe’s head is actually closer to a perfect circle then it is an oval shape. Unfortunately, you’ve got a bit of an oval shape for its head going on. It’s ears are also a bit off, as it appears you have the lines of its ears coming too far into it’s head and the outer shape where it forms the ‘hills’ (as I’ll call it), also appear to come in too far in comparison with the official art. To the top of it’s head sits a yellow flower crown of sorts and it feels a bit too thin. The placement of the crowd on it’s head is correct, it’s just it appears much smaller on your piece. Still on the face, I feel as though the blush feels a bit small in comparison with the eyes. It is a bit confusing, but after comparing the size of the two, it feels like the blush is a little over half the size of the eye or it could fit perfectly in the center. The eye’s and the nose (or mouth) themselves however appear to be about the right size and shape, so great job overall on it’s head.

Moving on again, we see Flabebe’s body shape and while the general shape is there, i feel it’s a bit too long and egg-shaped in your image. It’s not a circle, but it’s close to it, not an easy shape at all! The shape of the arms appear to be fine, though they are placed a bit too low on the body. They should be just a bit closer to it’s head but not exceedingly close. The lower green area on it’s body appears to be fine for the most part aside from the pattern as it’s body transitions from white to green. It’s hard to see if you’re only looking at one piece, but if you’re looking at several of them, you’ll see that there are like little hills creeping up and down where the transition takes place.

Next we have the flower that Flabebe sits on and my first thoughts on it is that it looks amazing! I really like the shape and the coloring of the petals. The petals do seem a little short as compared the art but I feel like this looks right mostly because of the perspective you drew in. The center portion looks right and goes up into an antenna-like piece (or pistil). However the ball at the top of it seems a little too small and a bit odd in shape. In the official art it looks like a perfect sphere whereas here it again looks like an oval. The american flag added on it looks really good, especially the fold you have there. The stem and the leaves on the flower appear to look really good, though the taper on the main long part of the stem is a little weird. There isn’t a taper there in the official art. The only other thing would be that you forgot to add the three little spherical spores(?) that come out from the center of the flower. Overall, the flower itself looks good.

The last part of the piece is the vase and there isn’t too much to add here as we have an outline of a generic vase filled with water and Flabebe’s flower sitting in it. I really like the idea and the vase and water seem to look pretty good, so nothing to add there.

All in all, the forms in general look like they should, but were off a tiny bit in different ways. I could definitely tell what everything was. Being there is no background, fixing some of the things mentioned definitely could land you a couple of points.


Background/Foreground:

There really isn’t a background here to comment on, however I believe its something to be added to give something else to this picture. As it stands, with no background, Flabebe just kind of fades off into the white of the image. It feels a bit lost and plain due to no real contrasting colors against it. In fact, because of there being no background to help draw my eye to the subject of the picture, my eye immediately falls to the flag sitting off the flower. Being this is about capturing Flabebe, I would image you'd want the eye drawn to the subject of the image even if everything is judged as a whole.


Line:

The lines look really good in some parts and in others it appears to fade into the background. For example, on the flower, the lines are clearly there and help to ‘bring out’ the petals more against everything else. It enhances the look of the flower and the same goes to the flag. In fact, being more specific, the lines on the flower petals and the flag are bold and easy to see. However the lines on the majority of Flabebe’s body are faded and light. I can see them, but they definitely don’t bring much attention to it. This is the same for the stem and leaves of Flabebe’s flower as well as the vase. In fact, I can’t even see the lines of the vase where the water begins and ends at the bottom of the page.

Technique:

As there is no background, I can only talk about the technique you implemented in coloring Flabebe and the vase, as well as any lighting or shading done. Starting with Flabebe, most of it’s body is white, so a lot of it’s body is shown through your shading and lines. The shading on Flabebe is kept pretty simple and actually a tiny bit inconsistent in a few areas. When I look at it’s head, I can totally see the light coming from the top left as indicated by the shadow’s appearing on it’s right. The shading on it’s top left ear seems a bit oddly placed, but that’s a minor thing. I see that you kept most of the shading to the right of it’s body as well, but too much so that it looks like the lighting would come from the left rather then top left. The whole bottom portion of it’s body where it tapers would probably benefit from having a more rounded shadow that extends from one end to the other in a crescent moon type of shape. It’s a bit hard to explain, but I hope you understand what I mean nonetheless. There is also some light shading on the crown I noticed, but it’s very faint and hard to see. Colorwise, it appears to be pretty even on the colors. There’s the shadows, and being it’s mostly white, no highlights from what I can tell. However, i think it could have benefited from some more at least on the crown and maybe a bit on the green part of its body.

Compared to how you colored and shaded Flabebe, the flower portion of it is beautifully done. I love the little circle highlights you’ve done to show where the light hits the flower petal and then the color darken’s to where the shadow’s would appear. The lines on the flower petals help to enhance this effect and it really does look nicely done. I also like that you decided not to go with any particular color of Flabebe and opted for a more patriotic approach and it looks great! Moving to the pistil, it’s mostly evenly colored aside from the shadows on the right. Here, from what I can tell, the way the shadow’s are placed again points to the light source coming from the top left of the image. There isn’t much I can add to what’s been done to the flag as the coloring is beautifully done on it. If I had to be picky, I’d say just to put some kind of shadow on it to further emphasize where the light source is. Last but not least is the stem and leaves portion of Flabebe’s flower. It’s again, pretty evenly colored with no other color value’s on it. I would understand it being completely dark if the light source was overhead, but as it’s coming from the left somewhere, there’s going to be at least some light on it’s left side. The vase also appears to be made of glass, so light would shine through it and hit the stem. Otherwise, it would be strange that the leaves appear to have light hitting them while the stem is avoided. Talking about the leaves, the way the light hits them looks nicely done and hit’s that ‘crescent moon’ shape I was talking about earlier with Flabebe’s body. I also like that the shade get’s darker as it goes into the water.

The final point here I’ll make is about the water. The vase itself is more or less just lines, so I’m going to focus more on the water here. There really isn’t too much to comment on as it looks really neatly colored and i like how it’s darker in some areas and lighter towards the center. You also made sure the water wasn’t a flat line across in the vase showing that there is movement within the water because of Flabebe’s flower. The only thing I might have added here was a few movement lines within the water. Other then that, the water looks really nice. I like it a lot!

Overall:

Overall, I really like this image, and while I can definitely tell what everything is at first glance, there’s one thing this picture is really lacking and that’s a background. A background adds a lot to an image and a nice one to contrast Flabebe’s colors would help to make Flabebe stand out more. The main subject of this image is Flabebe, not the flag (as nice as it is), and currently the flag is stealing all the spotlight right now.

Again, I understand how hard it is to make changes in traditional art, but I’m just going to re-mention some other things already spoken for. I think it would be an easy enough change to fix the issue i mentioned with the shape of the ears, the thickness of the flower crown and possibly the size of the blush. A little adjustment on the shadow towards the bottom of Flabebe’s body and adding a shadow onto the flag I think would both add to this piece. In addition, i think thickening up or just darkening some of the lines used to form Flabebe would also be beneficial.

All in all, I really liked this piece but I’m going to have to score this piece 35/45.. So Flabebe is not captured. However, I believe if you add a nice little background, it doesn’t have to be complicated and maybe made 1 or 2 small adjustments I mentioned, that should be enough to score your little flower loving pokemon. If you plan to make these corrections, feel free to let me know and I’ll give you a new score.

I hope to continue seeing stuff from you!

Thanks for the curation! I'll claim my $5k for the theme and hopefully have an update... soon-ish.