This is my final book cover for the first project in Styles and Concepts. Since I still have time, I am open to revision suggestions.
I would say in all this is a ball park of like...16 hours ish in this as it stands now. I'm happy with it, though am still a bit iffy about the cliff faces. haha that one nearest has been painted over completely like three times...
The second piece I posted is just something I started for fun and kinda hit a wall on so it is now open to a needed crit. Any suggestions are welcome I would hate to scrap it but I just may.
8 comments:
Hey Alex, Tarzan looks great! And I think you picked a perfect typeface. I'd agree with you about the cliffs though, they look too... unnatural, I suppose. They're just not as imperfect as cliffs (especially cliffs in the jungle!) would be.
However, judging from the detail in the tree, I don't think you're far away from it at all.
The pose is LOADS better, he definitely looks ape like now, as any good tarzan should, his forearm looks a little small to me though, length wise
the atmosphere is quite nice too with the dark forground and light background
the type face works but im not crazy about the white splotches on it
now its just a matter of tighening up the painting im sure it will be good
Tarzan's looking pretty good so far. What kind of reference are you using? If you haven't already, I'd get some good photos of cliff faces to paint from. There's also a little issue with Tarzan's hand (the one closest to us). The top of it feels unnaturally flat. The texture of the forest canopy works in the background, but you should consider actually painting in the leaves for that foreground foliage. And speaking of leaves, the light coming through the leaves is nice, but the light spots in the shadows feel a bit too uniform, i.e. they're all relatively the same size and shape. Try to vary that up a lot more. This is all getting into the finer nit-picky details of things, but this piece is at the point where now I think it will come out that much better in the end if you start to tackle those details and really get some good useful reference. Otherwise though, you've got a really kickin' piece going here and have managed to pull a lot of things off quite nicely. Keep it up!
Goddammit alex.
Thanks guys great feed back, except from mike. haha
I did have some really great ref but I think I wasn't following it closely enough, ill need to really go back and re work that for most cliff face and a bit in the back as well.
The foliage up front I did plan to go back into and draw it out. It just looks far to soft to be so close.
As for the lights and the hand. didn't notice. Good call Jake, I may need to hunt down or take ref for the light shinning through the leaves... I was kinda guessing but I see what you mean.
The first think that stuck out to me was actually the light pattern created like jake said. The ones on the side of the tree bother me especially, with how spotty they are.. that downward sun light would create some longer shaped ones...
Tarzan looks great... personally, one thing I thought disney did right was how they made him walk on the knuckles of his hands. Just a quick suggestion. You have time....
Pose looks good too, although if you were in the mood I wouldn't mind seeing his left arm reaching out a little more, like he is getting ready to move. Because both arms are positioned the same way, kind of gripping, he just doesn't come off to me as someone whose spent much of his life up in the trees, ya know? He looks nervous to be there, or preparing for the poop of a lifetime.
Last nit pick, which these are, I still can't believe you worked this far ahead (I mean this in a good way... I thought I wasn't doing so bad haha)... lays with the text. It feels really wimpy. There's such a huge, grandiose landscape there, tarzan discovering the city... theeeeeen skinny weak text. By that I only mean it's weak by contrast, with everything else here. I'd say that for once, big chiseled letters might work here, and I hate that kind of type. BUt it's mighty. If this were an actual book cover, I would even metallicize the words. I may be off my rocker here, but I think it brings your hard work down a notch. The typeface I think is fine, but the roughness and flatness I'm not digging in this particular case. Don't be afraid to make that text nice and big too, you have alot of real estate right there.
Soooo.... I guess I'm done with my hissy fit about how terrible you made me look haha. Although I was a bit harder on you because you are done so early and you DO have so much time to fix it up a bit. No major things left.... I'm jealous. I wouldn't say alot of these things if this was the day before, cause at that point, that just makes me a jerk, or so I think... RIGHT... great job so far, pat yourself on the back, now I have to go work on this thing and catch up.
p.s. The speedpainting is one of my favorite things I've seen from you.... first time I've actually seen you go looser.
The Tarzan looks good! I would make the title pop a little more, however. I'm not sure what your guys guidelines for the project are, but on a book you want the title and author to be really prominent; a good reason why so many book covers have subpar art on them.
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