Inspired by the paintings of Josh Keyes -

Edited by darchangel - 17 September 2009 at 2:16am

I really love this so far, awesome concept 

Lovely! Just make sure to stay clean as this can easily become a pixel pudding.

if the animals on the left (right if u were the hands) were a little more spread appart it would look better

Crow - Would it help if I took one of them off, the 3 closer together are a pair of cubs following their mom.

Dhr Bosch - Do all the rocks on that finger look fuzzy or is it just the 3 that seem to blend into one another.

Wow, this is going to be awesome!

Maybe have a more still body of water in the hands? You could have a smaller waterfall between the right side thumb and forefinger.

Animals and trees: too similar in sizes and colors, too regularly spaced, and maybe too many animals.

Left thumb: there is not enough difference of textures between the nail and skin, or maybe it's just that the tip beneath the nail is nail-shaped and nail-sized. Looks weird anyway.

Careful with that dithering!

Me thinks you blues are too blue. With that much desaturated greens and browns surrounding the water I'd think the water's blue should reflect that.

*Too hard to detail with the animation being too fast please post update on its own :)

sorry for not replying right away but yes that would help

The new blues are much better, tho the lightest may be too bright still. The waterfall is far back in the piece.
The forest looks too full and demands far too much attention. Maybe, you could begin to fade at the wrist to soften that whole back area and up the arms. This would soften the piece and enhance the feeling that the hands are really near the viewer, enveloping him/her. This could be a cloudy area or foggy area or even water mist from the waterfall...or combo of these. This softening will also help in the water dripping though the fingers.
This may be something you have been contemplating since you have one faded tree on the left wrist.

One thing that I'm finding especially poor looking is the fingernails changing color so drastically. Is this needed? It can be the same colors as the rocks with some minimal moss perhaps. This way they appear to be fingernail polish and this is an artificial thing and does not suit the piece which is all natural, no?

E: The rock in the waterfall is a seemingly good idea but here its not reading well and frankly looks wrong. I would remove that.

ps: E: - Having just reread what I wrote checking for typos it all reads negative, I am hoping to be helpful and not attacking your work at all.




Edited by jalonso - 22 September 2009 at 9:47pm

No worries Jal, I don't read it as an attack but as criticism that will help me achieve the ultimate goal. I do appreciate you guys taking the time to comment.

I had been debating how I was going to present the forest and had 3 different views, but they all seem wrong...as you'll see in the following image:



Frames 1-3 is what I had in my head. Is frame 4 more like what you are thinking? Not necessarily ending it in a dither but more like fading into a lighter shade?

Manupix - Yes for the goats, something like that.

I originally blocked in all the animals using the same base colors so I just kept adding finishing touches the same way...I did think that it would be necessary to change the color on the goats, especially now that the cliff got darker.

I have been Googling different images of waterfalls and the ones that caught my eye more were some that had very mossy cliff sides, but it didn't translate too well in pixels. I will work on those before I call this final.

Speaking of waterfalls, most of the images I saw had grays in their water, but when I tried some of those shades it looked kinda dark, muddy even. Jal would you mind giving me a little more advise on those lighter blues? Should I go grayer?  

The #3 direction, fo sho!
Try desaturating colors as you step back, rather than lightening the shade.
You can have the farthest back color be a desaturated lavender/purple colors that works for the water to begin with. Then hue shift the colors til it blends into the green of the front trees. Think, blues, purple and not just a green ramp.
This also applies to the water, desaturate so it wont muddy up. Matter of fact develop these two ramps (the water and the fades) as one piece so you don't add too many colors.

I thank you all once again, appreciate your input. The one thing that I always find intimidating is coming up with a good palette, will work on your suggestions.

The lake still needs a lot of work, right now it's pretty much just a block of color to fill the space. These are 2 of the images that I'm using as reference:





So there will definitely be more reflections and highlights. I should have another update by Friday.

WOW!!! Next Friday turned into 3 Fridays later...time flies and all I was able to put into the project were a few hours of work. Anyways here is the next update:

Optimized a lot of colors, now it's 36. Detailed the lake and added a different forest. Still trying to figure out the colors for the goats.

***Pictures on first post***

Water looks great.
Consider coloring the goats with the lightest greys and a splash of the yellow.



Edited by jalonso - 11 October 2009 at 11:37am

Sorry, but for me this forest doesn't work at all, in terms of composition. It's a huge dark mass that ruins all the balance.

I'd suggest this: scrap the 2 densest greens, keep the lighter green purple and grey; keep a cleft down to the top of the waterfall (most important!), and add 2 or 3 isolated trees, as you have them in the wip (frame 6).

The water looks great, the cliffs look good on the left, so-so on the right.

Great progress overall anyway!