I'm finished, more or less at least. This is the final image:

I'm looking for final opinions before I upload this. Also, I need to know if I should/have to add a background; as I mentioned before, the transparency rule says "Optional", but everyone's piece for this challenge I've seen has a background of one kind or another, which confuses me so much I'm no longer sure if a background is required or not even though the rule says "Optional".
Thank you for all your support, guys :)

Looks better to me, ADrawingMan.

I hate to bring this up at such a late time, but it now appears to me like you've got some perspective issues. We're seeing the mouth of the bottle directly from the side, we're seeing the tree almost from the side, we're seeing everything below the tree from above. This would be alright, except now you have three semi-circle curves (the bottom edge of the land, the edge of the water's surface where it meets the glass and the edge of the bottle's bottom) that appear to have the same exact curvature. This crashes with the warped perspective that would be expected from seeing the mouth of the bottle from the side.

Is there any easy fix? I don't know. But I certainly think you need to exaggerate the curvature of the bottle's bottom in order to maintain the warping you started. The bottom and the water's surface can't have the same proportions.

- I like the steam coming out of the bottle

- Light rays are a good idea, but right now it looks a bit cramped, and two of the light rays too conveniently narrowly miss the bottle, yet fit inside the canvas. And if the strongest light ray hits the bottle, I would expect a more dramatic effect, which would require a lot more work.

I have some personal experience when it comes to failing with light rays
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12129&PN=1
Hmm, looking back at it, it's a shame I just ignored onek's advice.

@ADrawingMan Thank you! Yours is amazing, I love it :) I prefer the version withouth light rays though.
@Eggy, I think there's no problem using transparency, from what I understood!

For my part I've added two more potions : the Breath Potion that allows you to breath underwater and the Flow Potion that combines the Flying Potion and the Breath potion effects : Allows you to fly, swim faster and breath  underwater.

Now I'm hesitating between two background versions.






Edited by PCecile - 01 March 2014 at 7:25am

Made this illustration to explain myself better:

@CELS
Alright, I made (tried to make) a better mouth on the bottle... I managed to cover up some of the bad parts by using the smoke (I know, that's cheap :L). As for the tree, well I think I'll try making a separate asset and then insert it in later and try to make it more top-downish

I'm gonna take a break though, I'm pooped :P

@PCecile
I do prefer the one with the backround as apposed to the one with transparency but I would agree with Eggy. As for the first potion the shadow on the bottom looks a bit weird, I think it should be more curved, something like this. The potions are looking good though!



Edited by ADrawingMan - 01 March 2014 at 5:44pm

Thanks everyone for the feedbacks :)

For the background I think I'll go with the board version. So I've added some details.



I've also removed the "clashy" colors of the outline (in fact, as I made only the first potion first, the outline was a kind of pretext to use the 2 imposed colors.. but now I don't need it)

Another version, testing outlines colors (because hey, those are amazing potions, they have to shine a little :p) :



   As I live in France I don't really know when the challenge ends, could someone tell me the exact hour? (I prefer to ask here and be sure!)

@CakeDrake I like the idea :) But I don't really understand why he looks so surprised, maybe the thing in the bottle isn't enough impressive!


Edited by PCecile - 01 March 2014 at 2:22pm

@Pcecile
Lookin' good! My only crit is that the on the third potion, the part where the light blue meets the pink is really strong. Maybe if you added another color to smooth out the transition it would make things easier on the eyes?
As for the time, PJ says it ends in 1 Day, 6 hours and 35 minutes so plenty of time :)

@CakeDrake
Nice concept you have! The one thing that does look funny imo is the blue and pink lines on the table (unless those are just wips for the glowy effect).

I think im pretty much done here:

Thanks for letting me know Cecile d('U')o
this is the pic then: