Dead System - C&C please..

READ:

Okay, this is what I have been doing the last two days. It's suppost to be the space art 2 entry, if I may enter with this one. If not, then ok. :P I sat up to 5 in the morning and worked on this and finally I feel I am somewhat finished. Or that is for you to decide! I want you to give me criticism on this one, because I want it to be really good. Like daily deviation worthy. :P I guess my eyes are too used to this scene to see any obvious mistakes, if there are any.

So, give me criticism if you can come up with anything. But PLEASE do try to concentrate on more obvious stuff rather than small details that took you 10 minutes to find. Searching for errors are just silly, so go for the most important stuff! But if you really need to tell me detail errors, then do it. :P It can be important in the end too.

Also, if the title sucks, please help me come up with a better one and I'll give you a thanks in my deviation in DA. I haven't uploaded it yet - of course. That's why I'm asking for help.

Title: Dead System (Good? Bad? Help me out here)
Tools: Photoshop, Wacom Graphire3, Terragen, Bryce (lol)
Worktime: Around 22 hours so far. Had to get some sleep after 13 hours. :P

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/1...dsystemfs7.jpg

Edits:
- Made "mountain beacons" thinner + fixed lighting on them (might just make them thinner again)
- Added highlights to the lava
- Darkened the back side of the mountain chain in the bottom
- Added a little more highlights to the planets (might do more though)
- A little less red in the clouds
- Erased a small part of the city on the left
- Changed the star a little

More to come! Jack has also pointed out some stuff in a PM that I will into.

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I'll write some kind of story or description for this work later when I submitt it to DA. The city, volcano, planets and solar system will have names. The city (or maybe it's a big factory-city-whatever or something) is getting all it's power from the volcano, but is pretty well protected from the danger. But of course it's probably not so safe to be so close to a fucking volcano. Anyways, I'll come up with everything later. :D

Hope you like it.

If you want you can check out the Terragen render I used here: http://img438.imageshack.us/img438/7863/grrroundge1.jpg

nice, some of the pillars and city areas are out of perspective of off their respective planes... i noticed near the base of the volcano the city looked like it was going underground partially.. you might try emphasizing the line between the two...

secondly... clouds normally arent red at night.. i assume you were trying to tie them into the color of the volcano.. but there wouldn't be THAT much reflective color. Try toning it down to match the space scene or ground more.. try to use red as only subtle accents, a violet, or grey would be much more suited for the image, even possibly a green.

now space scene... starts are nice.. but the planets look like you used solely mid-tones and shades.. i dont notice any apparent highlights (aside from the glows) ... this makes it much more dull in my eyes and takes away from the overall 'image' (at least in the upper portions)

lava is very well done, though some richer reds and yellows might be needed to make it 'glow' more... it almost looks flat/dull in some parts.

I love it though Rab, keep it up.

Thanks Ricky!

Hmm, can you be more specific about the pillars' perspective? I can't see it.. I can see what you meant with the city though, I'll try to make it better.

Well, about the clouds, I was thinking that the planet(s) themselves are very poisonous (spelling?), and therefore I had very red clouds. The scene is not on Earth. I will look into it though. Maybe I can tone the colors down a tad. Still want them pretty red though. :)

And for the space scene.. Thanks, I'll see what I can do. The space scene is what I worked the least on. So that is what I thought could be the big "error".

Lava is what I worked most on. It was like 6-7 lava hours. :( I'll see what I can do with hightlights and stuff.

Thanks!

ahh i see, well i personally havent seen red poison.. maybe try adding a yellow tone to parts of it or somthing.. people usually reconise yellow or pea green as a form of poisonous gas... though who knows it could be that way on other planets.. it just seems like the clouds are very flat... maybe try adding more contrast.. it might make the red look alot better.

edit: about the lava... your color seems very uniform in some areas and has fairly even color... and image like this
has more variation of tone and looked much brighter and seems to glow at points of high contrast.

I think this is awesome, a few things that I find a bit weird..

It looks like some of the pillars are standing weird (if you look at the base of them), also the lighting looks wrong on the far right one (shouldn't you only barely be able to see the light reflecting of the pillar?)

Also the two pillars in the middle of the city look a bit out of place..

The sun or bright star that reflects light on the rest of the planets looks a bit weird too.

Amazing job!!!

Title-wise, maybe Desolation, Abandoned Life (sp), Hot Rock.

Just spit balling.

Well, maybe not poisonous like that, but you know, extremely polluted because of volcano eruptions and stuff like that! :) You know, Mordor style!

I have looked on many many reference photos when painting the lava. And also Dylan Cole's lava for the LotR volcano. It seems that it sometimes is in different tones (some very dark) and sometimes it is pretty much just in one tone. I'll try to add some brighter parts to the lava. I'll update the picture when I think it's ready again. Thanks. :)

Thanks guys, I'll look into all your critzzzz. Sorry for the double post!

cool, that looks sweet
i dont really like how the tower lights work

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Horus

cool, that looks sweet
i dont really like how the tower lights work

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Huh? Please explain what you mean. :P The reason why I put them there is simply because without them you couldn't see that it was a mountain chain. It looked just like a big steep, which I didn't want. Also, it added alot more depth than without.

If that's what you meant, then please don't write stuff like that without explaining or giving criticism. I mean, ok you don't like it, woooh!

Or maybe you meant something else. :P

i think he means the light 'flare'ish things on the pillars.. i dont like them either lol... thats kind of what i was attempting to say when i said the towers were out of perspective.. since they seemed a bit to wide to look real.. it threw me off i suppose.

Horus is a girl! :o Hmm, ok. I like them though. I think it helps the picture, plus it's easy to explain why they are there. You don't wanna fly straight into solid rock, do you? ;D But you guys haven't seen them without the lights on, so I guess it's hard to tell.

xD i know, i didnt look to see who posted T_T im busy drawing my Aotw entry so im a little distracted.

sorry horus.

oops, sorry rabies! i meant to type look instead of work...i dont know if that helps at all..(i think my mom was screaming at me while i was typing that so i may have been a bit distracted :S sorry!)..but i just mean that the way theyre done doesnt look right, i didnt mean take away the lights completely. i think they have to be a bit smaller, and more of a yellow tinge to them, or change the uhmm shape (?) of them

Wow great work Rabbi, very impressive :)

One thing that caught my eye was the volcano 'explosion': It seems quite out of place, usually the plume is followed by the explosion, not simultaneously. :)

Thanks people.

Horus: I'm making them a little bit thinner. What about that?

Shurai: Hehe, true, but I was thinking this as some kind of supah active volcano that always is active, or something. And I wanted it look as much as a volcano as possible, so I'm not changing it. Thanks for the critz though. :)

I'll post the newer version soon. I'm going away today and I'll be back with my girlfriend, so I won't have so much time to work on it. So I'll just post it now.

Edit: Posted it.

This is abosultely amazing! It looks like the "City" kind of fades off though, like it's just a noise pattern, might make it a little more defined.

Wow, truly amazing. The beacons are good as they are imo, except for the ones in the city. Those you can do totally without and not hurt the piece. The really don't seem to add that much for me, although the ones on the mountain are cool. Another little thing is that the lava seems to either follow or turn into the city streets. If thats what your aiming for its good but it looks just a little odd to me (that was one of the first things that i noticed).

Overall this is a very impressive piece. I really have got to get myself terragen lol.

awsome job..

i always like planet/galaxy stuff..

i like the idea that there's a village down the hill..

good work

really like it

I'm not going to give you any Crit for this, I'm just going to say that it looks fucking beautiful. The angle Does work, very well. I see little to no flaw in this, for perfection is flawed. I got to hand it to you man, You're creativity is spot on, and your age, in comparison to what you can produce is completely astounding. I'm glad to have been able to see you're ideas evolve in the time iv spent here. You have really continued to motivate me and inspire me to always try and then try harder. Thank you.

HyperSniper: Aight, thanks. I'll see if I can polish that a little.

CrazyGamer: The city is suppost to have like channels around itself, so that they can control the lava flow and then use it for energy. That is at least what I have been thinking of. :)

Kaleidoscope: Thanks man! :D Very inspiring to get such compliments!

could u please tell me what font it is you used for it . it really stands out and is really suited for photos with thoses black border things at the top and bottom

Just Times New Roman with lots of space between the letters. Maybe 4-600 or so.

Ok: The lava...is a bit to yellowy on the bottom of the main plume.

The green and purple just kinda looks out of place...in the upper system, I think it would look good if you kept the red theme. And the star seems a BIT to bright. (the main flashy star)

Other then those things, I think I may just bow down to you....;)

just gotta say u fail horribly at life.. lol just kidding. I love this, only thing i can see that looks out of place is the fact that the smoke just kinda rises up in a column, maybe if u added a bit around the bottom it would look awesome. I would fav that for sure. Good good work, Props.

I'm not doing any changes now. You should have been like a week earlier, slowpokes. :P

Thanks.

The fire sprays coming out of the volcano don't look all that good, i think you better either lose them entirely or make them more fire/lava like and update them with the lighting of the whole piece on them.

Edit: well poo, missed my window of CnC. :C

I love it! :) Please, please, please, please make a wallpaper version! :o

It's too bad that its too late to comment, but I don't have much to say about it anyways. It's just too good! :eek: Well the only thing is that it seems like the volcanic eruption is more of the side of the volcano rather than the top, which looks a little odd.

Very, very, very, very, very good job! You are the coolest. ;)