My project "Assassin's Outlook"

Thoughts?


The perspective is off.


The horizon line is somewhere around the character eye level, barely see the top of his shoulder but not top of his head. We do see the top of the cliff he’s standing on. The tower top is above the horizon line and we wouldn’t see inside it, just the side.

Also the scale clues are off. The tower looks tiny, which it could be compared to the mountains. But there is a small little bush in the bottom right corner but similar bushes are next to the tower.

There is a good start for a golden ratio composition. Would need to reframe it for that and get the character separated from the background, which should be easy enough because a light hits him but the mountains are in shadow. Also his pose could be more clear and majestic.



The cape could lead the eye to him and also darken the bottom right corner. It also wouldn’t then matter if the shot was zoomed in a bit to have parts of the cape fill that corner.

I feel like the cape was the main attention getter in this piece due to its size. Is there any reason it is so long?

It is a stylistic choice. Its a look i had when first sketching the idea and I enjoy it. Would it be better with a emblem on it perhaps?

@ JA12

I changed the view angle some. This is the golden spiral applied over it:


If I am correct your suggesting putting the tower at the end of the spiral?

The exact positioning doesn’t matter. The arrangment of the elements just needs to be pleasing to the eye, guiding it and catching it. Rest of the image has to support the focal point and you had elements arranged towards golden ratio. Because of that, the viewer wants to see more of the tower and it’s the interesting part of the image.

The cape is too visible and the focal point is not visible enough, so the cape would function as a guide when framed/posed so the general composition line follows top/left side of it instead of current bottom/right. I don’t mean exactly, just a general flow of things.

I did some an overhaul changing the colors, camera view, and changed the tower model.


The glowing cape and the torch is where my eyes are immediately drawn, i think that if you want the focus to be on the character then tone these things down a bit. I also thing that some DoF could help focus the attention of the viewer

…But the clouds on the last render are really amazing. They were beautiful from the beginning, but now are more than that. How did you do them? DId you use HDR?
Also the mountains caught my eyes, especially top, it’s really fits this image, I like it. The bottom looks a little flattened, it lacks randomness imho (maybe some bushes, like on your first renders, could save polygon count). But the tower is looking like it’s created not so long ago (I don’t know how about others, but I expect to see old-stylish tower in the scene like this, aren’t you?) and that causes perplexity for me.

I think the composition is much stronger, but two suggestions: 1. More color / curves contrast between the assassin and the environment will help immensely. 2. Love the cloak design but right now it’s over-whelming the image. Plus, if they’re an assassin, shouldn’t they be more stealthy? I’d see him a mile off with that cloak :wink:

Keep up the great work. Looking forward to seeing where this takes you!