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Souvillaine [2018-10-07 12:55:01 +0000 UTC]

Hi there!

 I'm from and I am here to give you some constructive feedback on your work!

 You said you're having trouble with shading and giving this a well detailed background. To solve the latter, I can assure you that more details doesn't mean the image is looking better at all. Actually it is more important to use some contrast to your advantage. Fact is, you want your creature to be looked at, right? So leave the background plane and simple while dedicating your time to add details to the important part of your image: the creature. In this particular case, it wouldn't be wrong to leave it out entirely. This kind of hunting method by the anglerfish only works in the deep sea, where there is no light at all. That makes the background quasi black. To let your character stand out, is simply by only lighting the part of its body that gets caught by the light. It doesn't matter much if you use a soft or sharp brush for the shading then, as long as you watch that it is emitted correctly to the skin and where its body fades to the black of the background. Automatically this adds more creepiness to your piece by hiding away the full body of the creature.

 Well, it depends on what you want to achieve with this image too. If you want to make a showcase of your creature, it would be better to do a side view of it without any obstacles in the way and probably leaving out the background at all. In your drawing, you try to do something of both worlds it appears. Not wrong, but keep in mind that deciding where to go with your artwork can extend the effect you can have on the viewer to greatness.

 For some inspiration, I can suggest you to check out Cloister's Gallery here on Deviantart. You can find the section of creature design here: www.deviantart.com/cloister/ga…

I hope you found this useful! Keep it up!

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theJfluffy [2018-10-03 07:34:17 +0000 UTC]

Fascinating! 

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Exempdent [2018-10-01 01:07:18 +0000 UTC]

"Oh, damn. He did a great job with it!"

First thought that came to mind.  I also really love those bubble effects.

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Haleyzen [2018-09-30 22:38:10 +0000 UTC]

Hi! I found your piece through ProjectComment @

Hey! I commented on this when it was lineart, and I have to say, very nicely done! Your background and water texture look great! Overlaying some of the bubbly/particle effect just a tad over the Hunter itself could really help set it IN the water, but this is fantastic! Love the coloring on the creature itself! Personally, I'd say you did really well with the background, since, presumably, it is set a good distance back. 

Constructively, to help add realism to the creature itself, adding some type of craggy texture to its skin or the bone-plate-looking materials would help give it that deep-sea-creature ugliness that could help make it look more monstrous. Alternatively, since not all deep-sea creatures have the craggy look, some merely have scales or streamlines. Adding some of these effects to break up the smooth sections of his skin, again, will add more realism to it.

As for the background, I think you went a perfectly fine route. Sometimes, simpler is better, and your background feels set far enough in the distance that specific details wouldn't be apparent anyways. Because of the way you faded the background (quite well in my opinion), you could probably benefit from applying some attention to the foreground, such as a craggy or sandy texture, and maybe spritz a few sea weeds or corals for effect, but the way it is avoids drawing attention, so the attention stays on the creature itself, which works great. If you were looking to still improve the depth of the background, adding more details as simple as angular lines for lighting and shading can help give the background just a little more depth, but it's certainly not not lacking any sort of elegance as is. 

There are people much more experienced at things like actually performing dynamic shading on objects and character, so I would recommend seeking out the HOW elsewhere, but if you could gradually darken away from the lantern on it's head, this would really help add a lot of depth to the character itself. If you'd rather tackle it brute force the way I do, I make heavy use of the "blur" tool on separate layers by splotching a black or white and blurring it across the target to fade it. This is my way, it doesn't necessarily look great, but you can then adjust the opacity of the layer to dial it in. I recently did this for window glare, which I'm content with, but like I said, there are better ways to do it that I don't know. But, every step forward is a step in the right direction, so definitely experiment with dynamic lighting. Especially in pictures where a source of light is visibly present in the picture, this can really help sell the light itself. The glowing effect you have is a great start, but with how dark the sea can get, shading away from the light can really expand on what you have.

All in all, the evolution of this picture from lines to the current has been well accomplished. In my opinion, the picture works very well as is, and your character design is extremely well done.

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XXRaptorguyXX [2018-09-30 21:56:14 +0000 UTC]

Ohh, very nice!

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