Useful Critique

After producing my early piece of work today on painting Lava, I decided to seek some critique. So I turned to a very good friend of my, Junior Artist at Atomhawk Design, Connor Adams. I first met Connor on the Train2Game course both on the 3D Artist and Animator course.

Connor's work has increasingly grown stronger over the period I have known him, and he continues to help me with my studies providing me with great tips and tricks, with reference to artists and books that'll help me.
His portfolio can be found over at his FACEBOOK page. I'm sure you won't be dissapointed.

Any way, moving on to the purpose of this post, Connor has provided me with some great tips; this time round on contrast.

In his words, "[...]don't forget that contrast comes in more forms then just value. So there's colour, edges and composition to consider as well". Straight away he made me realise that the only thing I had thought about in my piece, was the values!


The conversation then developed more specifically into edge control, as this was one topic I hadn't ever thought about. My immediate thought was that he meant how sharp my edges were. But with the first artist example he showed me that changed.

He began by talking about the shapes, angles, and whether or not the edge is soft or sharp; all these help throw your eyes around the canvas. The example he used to explain this was that of Rick Berry's which I have included below.

Notice how the sharp angles on the face immediately draw your attention. whilst the shoulders and back of the neck are softer, blurred, gentle edges. You don't really look at them until very last.

The conversation then further developed with another example, into how saturation and and how how 'tight' the edges are, also help to compose your image.

The Halo image found on CG HUB was the talking point on this topic. Connor discussed how the helmet has very tight edges with strong contrast against it's background. This compared with the legs which have very soft edges, and occasionally blend with the background.

It is important to consider your background, as you can see it can make a massive difference! I believe with my drawing, I should have maybe made it more dull, or include a full scene behind where I could use lighting to help make parts of my character to stand out.

The final point to make on this character is how the only Saturated colour is that on his helmet. Again, comparing this with my drawing; which has saturated points all over the place, shows a strong area of improvement.

Any way, I hope this report helps you (the reader) with any future paintings you may be thinking of doing yourself! I cannot express how much anyone that reads this post should visit the links within, especially that of Connor Adam's.

Thank-you for reading.