Hi sarah. Welcome to PixelJoint, and good job on your improvement :)

One problem with your current dragon is that, while you've done a good job shading each individual scale, you haven't done much shading of the overall shape, which leaves him looking a bit flat. It's usually best to shade your basic shapes first, then add texture on top of that.


I hope you'll reconsider. That's kind of what this forum is for :O Also, this has a lot of potential!

Thanks. Also, I have also made topics before this so I don't know why it says one post...Anyway,I've decided I will keep working on it. But how do I make him less flat? If I shade the whole thing, what would I do when it's time to add the scales? Perhaps an edit would help me understand.

Create your basic shape with basic shading:



Then add texture, keeping an eye on where your light and shadows were falling on the basic shape:

Bump

Changed it up a little. Wanted to know if the jaw is good so I can add the scales. I still would like more critique.

first make right shapes, then color/shade the picture. Last add details, scales.

Like Miumau said: Work on the shading first, then add the texture (the scales) lastly.

If you've already tried that, then maybe you wouldn't mind posting up the version that you have shaded in without the scales? (or unless you didn't direct that post at Miumau's comment) The scales and the shading seem to really need improvement, therefore we should probably take it just one step at a time.

Hatch i wish you would do more to your galery - that cylinder looks downright awesome!

I guess I'm just easily annoyed...I think there should be a lock button. Anyway, the reason I find the shading thing hard is because I'm not an expert artist and I couldn't do that good of a shading on regular sized stuff.

yeah sarah you have talent :-) just don't be afraid of pushing yourself. You must practice shading. and your first stab at it won't be great, but that's when you come back for more advice, and you practice, and it can be a cycle.

looking good. Now your dragon got shapes and it's not so flat. Also horns should cast shadow to the neck.  Now you should clean jaggies and maybe make the neck longer. And with blue BG its hard to read. Add brigh or very dark.

i dont think theres a specific dragon anatomy tutorial
its quite hard to find one these days to get proof yknow ..

just look up the muscle structure of some animals..
basically all mammals share the some anatomy (ok dragons lay eegs i guess... but yeah wahtever`)

Scales look awesome!

LOL Onek was going to say exactly what I was going to say.

Komodo dragons...great idea! I just found a video on youtube and they walk really strangely. I could see dragons walking like that...Although I would prefer them walking more gracefully. There is actually an awesome 3d dragon animation series here:http://animal.discovery.com/videos/dragons/ I could take a screenshot of that maybe to reference. It's really cool I've seen the whole series.

I have studied horses briefly. While...study is a big word. I looked at some tuts and drawings and have a few in my deviantart gallery. Thanks for the help guys. looking forward to more :D

Edit-cure thanks for those great resources! All in one spot :D. I have to say the T-rex is quite close to how I imagine dragons.

Edited by coolsarahkry - 22 July 2011 at 6:46pm

Glad you changed your mind to work on this more! It looks muchmuch better :D

Keep working on it know it will be reakky awesome when you are done.

Please don't bump your threads.

I gave him some texture- Thanks to Jeremy for the awesome guide!
Some of the scales look kind of messy to me. I tried to fix it but I didn't know how.

Edit:Submitted to Gallery. Thanks everyone! If you still have suggestions I will take them because I can just edit in a new one.

Edited by coolsarahkry - 24 July 2011 at 11:51am

try changing the texture and shadows for thus it is very amateurish.

So, help me too? http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12581