Posts made by aprilshin

Love how you treated the coloring, Jade! I really get the sense of magic here. I'm guessing that the last panel is showing a stone portal/gateway to another land? I would try to make this more apparent. Maybe have some dragonflies flying into the doorway or maybe have some runes around the opening, or maybe show a glimpse of what's on the other side of the portal? Love what you have so far!

@carrieannebrown Oooo that is such a cool idea!! I would love to see this dragonfly vehicle in all its forms! And @Gary-Wilkinson killing it with the great suggestions as per usual!

Hi Carrie-Anne! What a cool and unique idea! Love your submarine design! I agree with the others that it needs some wings. Maybe it could have nets to catch some cool fish? I also think it could use a little more depth. I drew up a really rough and messy sketch as an example. Maybe you can add more types of underwater creatures and corals so the boy can really be wowed by his underwater adventure! Been loving all your work, especially your Wizard of Oz design! Really impressive!

Hi Marek!

Your work is so lovely that I'm shocked that you're not already a professional! Your characters are super sweet and I love the colors and lighting you chose. And I'm in love with the way you designed the sign! Below is an idea you can perhaps play around with. I thought your characters deserved a bigger spotlight because they are just so adorable. I tried to move all the interesting parts closer together so that there would be room for text, and I ended up moving the text to the top. I'm not a graphic designer so I just handwrote the text there for placement only. I hope this helps you think of some ideas! Love your work!!

Hello Georgios! These characters are so cool~! It looks like they'd have a ton of fun adventure. The one thing that stood out to me was the character on the far left. His head is significantly larger than everyone else's, and though I get that he's a big character, I think if you made the head size a little smaller, he would fit a little more with the rest of the group. Right now it looks like if he was scaled down, he would have the same proportions as the character to the right of him. If you made the head smaller, it would make the rest of his body look bigger in proportion, similar to what you did with the character on the far right. Just my two cents! Thanks for sharing this fun cast of characters with us!

Love the comic idea! I think it would be helpful if you gave us a synopsis of the story you're trying not tell through the comic so we can better understand how to help you!

I agree with @burvantill, but I think the black graphic for the bottom one is a little too big. I think #1 will look better without the curve. Beautiful work as always, Braden!

@burvantill Hi Lisa~! Thank you so much for sharing your process with us. This is amazing! And it's a great glimpse into how much work (and frustration and heartache) really goes into writing and illustrating a children's book. I'm so encouraged and inspired by your posts and I hope to see your published book one day! Keep it up! You are doing great!!! And thank you for sharing your resources as well! Super helpful!

@Gabby-Correia This is a beautiful illustration, Gabby! I'm just wondering if the dragonfly has eyebrows or if they're supposed to be antennae. Either way, it makes the dragonfly look menacing, which is great if that's what you're going for! If not, I would remove the eyebrows/antennae altogether. Really stunning piece either way! I love your colors and textures.

@MattBaker Wowww, this is epic! Your body forms are all so beautiful and full of energy. This is one heck of a comic!

@Eric-Droke oh my gosh, the cats!! I could see this as a really cool wrapping paper! Or the front of a notebook, or any stationery for that matter. Awesome work!

@DanialGlover Hi Danial! Love all your ideas! I made a super rough sketch to see if I could help you with scale. I basically just showed a small portion of the umbrella and had it cast a partial shadow over the sandcastle. I also think it would be hilarious if the mouse recruited a crab to help him win this fight, so he's riding a crab, lol. This definitely isn't a great composition (everything is pretty much in the center), but I thought it could give you some ideas on how to solve scale. Although, that's a really tiny sandcastle now that I look at it, haha. Maybe you can have other normal-sized things next to it looking huge like a soda can, pail, shovel, etc. Good luck!

@JoshuaDages you are most welcome! I learn best visually so I love it when people do paint-overs for me too. And thank you so much for your kind words!!

@Eric-Droke I see what you mean~ in my mind I was placing them randomly, but now I see that I did not push it nearly far enough, haha. Thank you for the feedback! I’ll see if I can group them in a more interesting way.

@idid I was actually thinking about whether I should differentiate them a bit more. I wanted them to be simple and took inspiration from the below image, but maybe the simplicity and sameness only works in Princess Mononoke because there are other varied characters within the movie. I wasn’t sure how to keep the simplicity of my ghosts without making them look too similar/boring. This is something I’ll have to spend more time thinking/exploring. Thanks so much for the feedback! It pushes me to be a better artist, which I really appreciate!

@Jordi-Ventura Ah, you are so right! That looks so much better. Thank you, Jordi!

Wowww this is so coool~ I love that you're even thinking about anatomy! This piece is going to be awesome!

Hi Joshua! This is really a stunning piece and so great for your portfolio! Something that could help is to increase the contrast between the wall and your characters. You have such great shapes in the wall, so I made the outward faces a lot lighter and the sides a lot darker. I'm not sure how to make surfaces look glossy/shiny like gems, but below is my attempt, haha. Making the walls lighter helps your dark characters stand out more as @Kevin-Longueil mentioned. Looking at your image in B/W helps! I also made the top darker, too, but I'm not sure if that's working as well. As with everything, take all this with a grain of salt! Kudos on your new portfolio piece!

Absolutely love your dragonfly entry, btw! Such a cute and fun idea!

Hi Corey! Wow, you did a lot of work already! I love the dragonfly wings in A, and the tilted axis in B is awesome. I feel like B could've been one of those vintage horror movie posters . I agree that C is the weakst, and D has an interesting perspective, but I'm not clear as to what the story is. It looks like the boy is running away with his dog, but what significance does the dragonfly have? Is the dragonfly also his pet and wants to take it with him but the dragonfly wants to fly free?

I've also been way off in the critique arena, so my opinion may not be worth much, haha. But I really love B out of the four. I like the colors, I love the tilted axis, and I feel like I'm already seeing the horror movie play in my head with people screaming and running in the streets, haha. And the fact that it's a polaroid with snippets of info?? I'm hooked! I want to know more about this image! And about what happened to the person who took the photo. I love that the dragonfly is cut off in the photo like the person had to run away immediately after he/she took it. It's just such a cool idea and one I've not seen submitted in the contest so far this month. However, I think you should go with what interests you the most and what will be the most fun for you to draw. I'm looking forward to what you bring to the table this month!

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! @Nyrryl-Cadiz - I was not expecting to hear to keep it as is and dove right away into trying to fix it after I posted this, lol. But thanks so much for your input! It helps me be more confident in my art and I appreciate your feedback so much!

This is the road I started going down before I read all your helpful comments. @Gary-Wilkinson - As you can see, I tried to add a glow on my own but yours was done so much more elegantly that I tried to find how to do it on Youtube, haha. Omg this glow attempt is so embarrassing in comparison. And I was also thinking about shadows! I tried to have them light the ground underneath them instead, but.... that was a fail.

And below is the result after taking in everyone's feedback! I used an airbrush with "screen" as the blend mode to get the glow. I'm not sure if that's the right way to do it, but I think it's close! These ghosts look like they're having way more fun than my original post, so thank you all so much for your help!

I do like @xin-li's suggestion about the leaves. Would it enhance the image if I added leaves or would it be too busy?

If there's anything else I can do to make this better or if I've taken your advice and applied it incorrectly, please let me know! Thank you again! So grateful for this community!

Hello lovely SVSers! I created this image of a few ghosts having a musical parade in the middle of the night, but I'm not sure how to make this image better. Do I need to do something with lighting? Color? Textures? Better shapes or gestures for their bodies? Maybe the background is too interesting/contrasty and is stealing attention away from the ghosts? Your thoughts/suggestions are most appreciated. Thank you!