May contest entry WIP

[Morten Christiansen]

I thought the drawing was a bit empty in many places, so I added in some details. With most of them I try to reinforce the sense of forward motion. Is it too much or do you think it works well? Do the rats read as running? When I look at them closely, I kinda think they look stationary, but I'm unsure how to fix them at that small scale.

@ajillustrates @Janette You may find the design of the carts a bit familiar

[Matthew Oberdier]

I think a little cropping could help the composition a lot. If you look at the round dark mass of the tunnel, it really reads as a centered bullseye that goes very close to the edges of the paper all the way around.

[Matthew Oberdier]

Another idea would be to make your character breaking through the edge of the tunnel. I think overlapping the elements this way would really separate the foreground and help it read just a tiny bit faster. I hope you don't mind me drawing over, it's just the easiest way to communicate this idea:

[Janette]

This post is deleted!

[Morten Christiansen]

@Janette Cool, I like him

@Matthew-Oberdier I think you might be on to something. The cave is certainly too evenly round now that you bring my attention to it. I like the following cropping - it brings the viewer closer to the action which I think strengthens the tension. Thanks for the suggestion

[Matthew Oberdier]

@Morten-Christiansen Yeah it's looking very nice! I think maybe the background creatures might be competing a little bit with the main focal point because there's so much contrast back there. Maybe if you slightly darkened the brights in the back of the tunnel it would help us focus more on the main character. I think if you did that, and really tightened the detail on the main character, it could bring this piece to the next level.

[Morten Christiansen]

@Matthew-Oberdier I actually didn't plan on doing much more with the main character - mostly due to my lack of experience with character design - but your comment prompted me to try and go for a more detailed and well defined character.

@Sabrina-Gosselin It seems that your hat suggestion might make it into the drawing after all

[Sabrina Gosselin]

@Morten-Christiansen haha that's awesome! I really like him with the hat

[Janette]

@Morten-Christiansen This made me actually laugh out loud!

[Matthew Oberdier]

@Morten-Christiansen love the hat! I didnt mean redesign the character, I just meant render out the detail for your focal point. But well done.