Welcome to the forest! Here is my entry, that I have been working on over the past few days. The characters are fully rigged, everything is UV-unwrapped. I think in this piece I got much of my inspiration from the “crazy” in Crazy Firepower, but I hope you all can understand and appreciate the story behind this piece of art.
Created in Blender 2.72 and Cycles, with advanced compositing in the compositor, and some minor post processing in Paint.NET.
War broke out in the forest, with a new species of tree making it’s presence known. A hard, cruel species, hardly even a tree at all. The other trees have no chance to overcome their slow, methodical onslaught. They utilize those they vanquish to create machines of destruction, of terror.
This artwork is dedicated to all of those helping prevent invasive species from spreading.
Some of the things I am questioning are: Is it clear enough that the hollow tree is being used as a cannon? Are the characters helping tell the story effectively? Is it clear enough that the character on the left is loading the cannon?
I don’t think it is clear enough the the weapon is used as a cannon, at first I thought two trees were mourning a dead tree. Often with things like this the important parts are the composition and strong poses than can be recognized even with just a silhouette. I think the backgound is too bright and a little distracting.
Restudy ur lighting directions, and give some rim lights to them beasts! Well i’d say u need to do something about the arms and hands, they look wobbly and we can’t understand what they are up to. Your main focus is the canon, so light up its elements and make it stand out a little. Add a canon ball to the character on the left, i have no idea what he is doing there. I agree the background light stands out and it doesn’t seem to tell the same story that you do. One last thing is their expression, i’m not sure how to explain it but a guy lighting a canon won’t have the same exact expression as a guy putting in the ball. A few corrections and you will get what you want, good luck m8!
ps, the cable being lighted that is linked to the canon, try to change it and make it obvious that it is coming from the canon, i missed that completely.
Alright, here is a quick test. I have posed the left character more actively, changed the features, made it more obvious he is loading the cannon, and changed the projectile. Any more suggestions?
i really like the render. when i first looked at the first image, i had no idea what was going on before i read the title, witch said it was a cannon. at that point it made sence. i was gonig to critique the fact that it was hard to figure what was going on, but when i see the updated image, it seemes more obvious that its a cannon, so i dont know if i would been confused if i saw the second render first…
anyway that is something to keep in mind, make sure the viewer sees a cannon right away.
other than that i would like to say that the fuse and flare is kinda meh… it does not blend inn with rest of the image. this is in the forest, and they are using only nature elements, so having the fuze and flare witch is not nature elements is kinda off.
i would suggest to figure out something else, or just remove it. i dont think you need the other tree there holding anything. just have him leaning over the cannon.
