My work

[Siro]

Hey I was just wondering if some people could give me some feedback on the work i've done throughout my course I did a few years ago.

 

heres the link

http://jareth123.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Paj!]

Jareth Cutestory? [/don't worry if you don't get it]

 

If you did all those dragons yourself, that's pretty neat. Not really my kind of subject matter (bit wishy-washy internet/deviantart/digital art cliche, but they're nicely done regardless.

[Marcamillian]

Its times like this that I wisk that sketchtavern was still around. Twas one of those rare places where immensely talented professionals threw the gates open and helped anyone and everyone. I won't be able to match their advise but I shall endevour none the less.

 

One thing that can really make a difference in posters or graphic design in general is to consider how a persons eye reads the final product. By arranging shapes in such a way that they have "lines" that point to a focal point you can lead people's eyes to the focus of the picture and give more impact to the layout.

 

For example the "earth" dragon poster works really well to draw the viewers eye to the earth in the centre because all of the lines in the shape of the dragon point to the middle, helped by the symmetry of the image.

 

 

This principle could really improve the layout of the game posters in your gallery. Deciding on where you want the viewer to focus on first and building from there. Just moved a few bits around and made a little less cluttered.

 

 

The eyes are a natural focus in the middle of the image, the lines of the nose and eyebrows leading towards the center. From the central focus your gaze tends to follow down the lines of the nose and hair towards the title. BAM. Hooked them in with the first focus and then secondary focus deleivered the title of the game.

 

(after having looked it again if the eye line was raised more the effect would work better but thats what tweaking is for )

[Emasher]

 

You might want to actually do some work of your own before posting stuff in here. A good portion of the stuff on your deviantart page isn't work, its copying images in and changing the colours a bit in photoshop.

 

From the looks of things, the only work you've actually done is the 3 sketches, which aren't bad, but in the future you might want to specify to us what part of what you're linking to was actually your work.

 

Also, the effects you've added to some of the images, like the chrome and the bevel are too obvious, you should go for subtlety when using those.

 

TL;DR: Most of this "work" is just copying and pasting, besides the sketches.

[Siro]

The posters I designed was for an asignment to advertise various stuff people wanted, which was why I chose to do games, I didn't need to make much images because of that very reason. The dragon image you posted I got lazy and just decided to copy and paste already made images and I guess it got the point across as well for the element I was doing, the only other thing that wasn't mine was the actual dragons of the other images, the wind and fire, water designs was mine I just used a stock image of the dragons and then did what I had to do, my teacher accapted that and passed them, (note his very heavy on copyright policy)

[Marcamillian]

Theres nothing wrong with recylcing images when the work you are doing is an exercise in composition and layout (which is why I commented on the composition). Thats just as valid as "work", people spend their entire lives arranging other peoples images for posters and magazine covers and a well composed magazine cover can most definitely be art.

 

It does get to be a probelm when you don't cite those sources. Even though it may have been done with the best of intentions, to a stranger it looks like you're trying to get credit for that which you have not done. If you said that it was a composition exercise in the description people know exactly what you have done and can give constructive feedback.

 

Again, this isn't discouragement, just a tip so you don't get people getting the wrong idea and having a go.

 

The most important thing is to keep doing stuff if you want to improve!

[Siro]

Oh, erm I thought I already stated that when I said it was course work but thanks for the tip.

[Emasher]

Theres nothing wrong with recylcing images when the work you are doing is an exercise in composition and layout (which is why I commented on the composition). Thats just as valid as "work", people spend their entire lives arranging other peoples images for posters and magazine covers and a well composed magazine cover can most definitely be art.

 

It does get to be a probelm when you don't cite those sources. Even though it may have been done with the best of intentions, to a stranger it looks like you're trying to get credit for that which you have not done. If you said that it was a composition exercise in the description people know exactly what you have done and can give constructive feedback.

 

Again, this isn't discouragement, just a tip so you don't get people getting the wrong idea and having a go.

 

The most important thing is to keep doing stuff if you want to improve!

 

There's a huge difference between spending time with someone's pre-existing work, and modifying it to make real improvements, ect, and giving them credit for what they've done, and spending a few minutes giving something a new background, and calling the entire thing your own work.

 

What I was trying to get at, was that it was somewhat misleading for him to tell us the gallery was all his work, when the most prominent aspects of it weren't really.

 

Now for some constructive criticism:

 

I pointed out a few things in my original post, but I'll go over them in more detail now.

 

The first thing that really needs to be fixed with the images is the edges of the images you've cut out. If you look at the different posters (and I'm primarily talking about the dragon ones), its very obvious that the image was cut out of another image. The edges are a bit jagged, as well as the lighting is a bit off. If this isn't a huge problem with the images you're working with, you can just do little touchups with the blur and smudge tools (just don't go overboard and make what you've done look really obvious, the image shouldn't actually look blurred). Now, if the images are really a problem, photoshop has a special blending command you can use to fix things just like this. You have to first mask the parts of the layers you're blending that overlap, but you don't want to blend, most likely, in this case, you would just mask the area of the background that's behind the image, although, leaving some overlap between the two, it doesn't have to be exact at all. After this select the two layers (command/control-click), and select from the edit menu "Auto-blend layers". Until you get used to it, its going to take some experimenting with what to mask, and what to not mask. Once you've done this, you should still play around with the edges a bit to make sure everything you wanted to be blended has been. I should mention, that if you're using an older version of photoshop, you may not have the auto-blend layers command, as it was implemented in a more recent version (CS3 I think it was). Another thing I'll quickly mention, is to familiarize yourself with layer blending modes (the drop down in the layers panel that should say "normal" by default).

 

The other main thing you need to be aware of is how to use filters and effects properly. Most of the filters and effects that are in photoshop have been in there since very early versions, if not the first. Most of them have already been in and out of style. They're just like fonts, for instance, papyrus was a nice looking font when it first came out, and it worked well in certain designs, but it was overused. It became such a common font that it didn't have that edge anymore, it became "that font". Everyone knew about it, so it wasn't anything special anymore. The same thing happened with fonts like Comic Sans, ect. One difference between fonts and graphical effects however, is that graphical effects have options. A glow doesn't have to be that light yellow colour, a bevel doesn't have to be a certain depth. Knowing how to change these parameters is the key to being able to use these effects/filters effectively. As I said in my original post, subtlety is the key. The default settings tend not to be very subtle, so you have to change them to make them more subtle. A glow shouldn't be the main feature of a pice of art, a glow should enhance the art, the same goes with any effect or filter. Take a look now at the wings of the fire dragon image you used. Its very obvious that you applied a bevel effect to it, and used the default colours to do this. If you're going to use a bevel, on a more complicated image like that, it needs to be way more subtle. I shouldn't easily be able to tell you used a bevel effect, I should just see that the image looks that much better. Try using colours with a more medium brightness, or decreasing the opacity of the effect. Bevels can be a good way of adding some depth to something simple, like a button, or text, but when you use them on a more complicated image that already has depth, it ruins the depth that was already present. Not to mention that in that specific example, the main source of light is obviously the fire, but the highlight of the bevel is on the wrong side of the wing to be lit up by the fire, whereas the part that should be lit up is covered by the shadow part of the bevel. Another example would be the chrome filter you used for the water texture. Before I start with that, I'd like the mention that I do like the way you've created perspective with the light on the water, but this is ruined by the lighting of the dragons (the bevel that you've applied, and the original lighting of the image). The chrome is a little too obvious in the image, and because of this, the background doesn't really look like water. Depending on whatever you applied the chrome filter to, you may want to consider leaving that in, and applying the chrome to a copy of it on another layer, and blending the two together.

 

Another thing you should look at is the way you've used colour with the earth dragon. The image obviously had more colour to begin with, and the design of the image was based around having more varied colours to work with. Because of this, forcing the blue colour on the image took away from the overall design, and made the image look very bland and flat. If you don't like the colour of the image that you're working with, you should try to work in the colour that you want to use, not just force it.

 

One quick note about the wind dragon would be that the different perspectives of the tornado and the hurricane you have in there don't work together.

 

Another quick idea you might want to consider regarding the fire dragon image, is rather than drawing the fire in the final shape that you want it, you might want to try and work it into the shape of fire through distortion filters, I find it can look a little more natural this way.

 

In general, with the video game posters, aside from some of the glows and other effects being to obvious and not fitting with the overall design, you should NEVER stretch images.

 

Also, you may want to consider using the general gallery sticky for stuff like this that you don't need an urgent reply to.

 

I hope that helps.

[Siro]

Thanks emasher for your imput i'll see what I can do in the futore with them, I must say however the only images that aren't really mine is the earth, and the actural dragons of the others, the fire and tornado's etc are mine believe it or not, the posters for the mags was when I did one of the first units of the course, which were very basic then.

 

Would it help if I mentioned That when I did my review of each piece I gave links to the orginal images?