Environment Piece: Final Touches

I added the sky and was ready to call it a day but then I decided to tweak it a bit.

I added a black in the background to see how that would work. It gives it a more ominous feel but I'm not sure that's what I wanted.

I also decided to tweak the sky and have one with the ominous look and one without.

I think that I'm going to go with the last one, the one with the tweaked sky and ominous feel to it.

Environment Piece: The Temple and Foregound

I needed to add a lot more detail to the biggest building in the environment which I felt was going to be hard to make it feel like a part of the overall piece. I also went ahead and started to add white highlights.

I was satisfied with how the textured roofs where coming out so I kept going with that level of detail. I'm also very happy with the foreground character and building.

Environment Piece: Painting Continues

I finished the vegetation and added an outline to the foreground elements. I feel that it works on this piece fairly well and helps add a separation from the rest which adds depth. On top of that I added the waterfalls, mist, and smoke.

Now that all of that is done, I started to work on the buildings

I was finding that the loose painting technique wasn't working as well with the man made things as with the organic. I went in and added more subtle colored outlines to help define the structure more.

Environment Piece: Start Painting!

So I did the outline in blue line and decided to add a huge tree in the background to make sense of the giant roots going through the buildings.

I'm pretty happy with where the painting is going so far. It's not as loose as the background in the character piece but it's not super tight either. It still manages to carry a loose painterly feel to it.

Environment Piece: Sketches

Now I need to get started on my environment piece. I don't have anything clear cut in mind so I just started to sketch various types of buildings.

I then started to just make a sketch of an environment. I really like the second one I did so I decided to go with it.

Character Piece: Still Not Done?!

 I'm happy with what I have and I'm really happy with how the eyes came out. The only problem is some of the details get lost when zoomed out. So I wanted to just post some closer pictures of the character and face.

So after showing my professor my finished piece he wanted me to trim the background to make the character more of a focus, which I'm okay with, and to add an outline on the character, which I'm hesitant about.

The professor used a photoshop filter to show me the outline that he was talking about.

I agree that the outline does make her stand out more, but I don't like the excessive use of outline done by the filter, and the face is completely squentialized. I decided to give it a shot by hand.

Truth is that even after doing it by hand, I don't want there to be an outline. I think the cropping and having her centered already makes the viewer's eye focus on her and adding an outline takes away from the whole look I was trying to go for in the first place. Maybe I just need less outline but I don't feel like it needs it at all. I've decided to stick with no outline as my final piece.

Character Piece: Final Background Touches

I've started to put the final touches on my background and then accidentally turned on the layers for the abstract wave. I liked the colors showing through so I decided to keep them in the background.

I also went ahead and added some more highlights on her and some sun beams coming through the leaves.