Red Riding Hood

[Ben J Hutchison]

This is a piece I've been working on for the past few days. Mostly acrylic but touched up with my Cintiq.

[natiwata]

Hi Ben! Very cool concept, mr. wolf is looking quite dapper, and the expression on riding hood's face is really nice and natural looking.

Something I notice is that the angle of the reflection seems to be off. If you think of red and the wolf and their reflections as 4 characters in the scene then their distance from the viewer is = 1)wolf 2)red 3)red's reflection 4)wolf's reflection

Because of that, the wolf would be larger in frame because he's closest to the viewer, but his reflection would but much smaller since it's much farther away in a sense. I attached a quick cut up, but it's probably not exactly right either, just wanted to give the idea.

Keep it up, it'll be great to see how this turns out. Is it done with traditional media?

[Pixby]

I love the rendering. Especially Red. She is adorable! However, the hand behind the wolf's back... the thumb is on the wrong side, I believe, and the fingers should be curling the other way. If I put my right hand behind my back like that, it's the opposite of what you have. Also, the elbow of the left arm as seen from the back seems to stick out a bit too far. The angle makes my eyes be able to think that either side could be linking to the hand. If I were you, I would drop the left elbow just a bit. But, again, great piece! Really like the style.

[Lee White]

I'm intrigued by this piece. I"m not sure if I should be scared for her or not. She looks sort of happy to see "grandma", but the wolf isn't in too much of a disguise. So shouldn't red be seeing this as "wolf" and not grandma?

Overall I think it's a neat image. I agree about the hands issue pointed out earlier. Also, if that is something important that wolf is holding, it's not reading very well just yet.

One idea that would be really cool is that the viewer (and red) see only a grandma figure, while the reflection shows that it's the wolf. Not sure how to pull that one off without really gettin in there and tinkering with it, but it could be amazing!

Good luck. Can't wait to see where you take it. : )

[Ben J Hutchison]

Thanks for all the input. I went in and fixed the hand. My idea for this was that this is where Red first meets the wolf in the woods and innocently tells him her plans. The concept was that they meet in a reflection so that we can see both the wolf and red without loosing each others expression. I also wanted to visually show that the wolf shows kindness and respect by taking his hat off but all the while we can see his evil hiding in his other hand.
This was done with arcylic but with touch ups in digital.

[Ben J Hutchison]

Another quick update based on your feedback.

[Kevin Longueil]

Hey Ben i love this piece - really looks nice! - one thing for me though was not getting the reflection right away...as obvious as it is now - i think adding just a bit of grass between the real Red and her reflection would go a long way to establishing it quicker (Nat Iwata did this in his paint over)and maybe a few more of the streaks of light across the reflections too...but maybe it is just me that didn't get it right away Really like the style of this!

[Peter Jarvis]

Hi Ben, I love your work. I really enjoy the fact that you are using acrylic them moving the piece to digital. Nice use of mixed media. I agree with the comments. the hears of the reflections should be smaller, lighter and slightly distorted with the water. There could also be something between the two Red Riding Hood characters. Great work. Happy New Year.

[Ben J Hutchison]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've taken many of them and tried to incorporate them into the piece.

[Ben J Hutchison]

So I decided to make it a postcard and they came in the mail today. So excited!