Feedback on book cover

I’m trying to redo a scene I created awhile ago for a book I’m writing. I would really appreciate any feedback anyone can give.
This render used 1600 samples. There is also some compositing.
I think their faces is what I have the biggest problem with.
Thanks


Biggest issues:

  1. Lighting, there is none
  2. Style clash. The apple, the dolls, trees and feathers each have a different style. It gives it a cut andf paste feel.
  3. Meaning. What is happening? Why is there an apple that super mario might eat floating above the hand. The story makes no sense.
  4. The skin on the dolls looks like plastic, like a barbie, the hair is much realer, but old lady gray. It’s kind of creepy. Why do these young faces have gray hair?

A quick run through of the story is the girls used to be angel wings. Hence the feathers as well. The fruit or apple is from the tree of knowledge.
1 - So, are you saying I need to make it brighter. I was trying to make them pop, but I always seem to have a problem with lighting things properly.
2 - I wanted the feathers and the apples to glow a little.
3 - I really wanted to try for a Final Fantasy type skin texture. any suggestions would be appreciated.
4 - Their hair is supposed to be white. I wonder if I could make their hair glow like the feather. I suppose I should at least make their hair more white.

well the lighting is very dull, push it up, set up a rim light, this scene needs shadows and contrast.

Those characteurs look like dolls, idk if that’s intended. that apple seems magic, maybe it could emit a glow. the feathers look a little weird like that, way too bright compared to the rest.

But that’s a good start!

I’ll work harder on the lighting, and the apple is supposed to seem magic, though, I can try to dim down the magic affect if it makes the scene seem off, along with the feathers. I feel the girls seem a little too fake as well, but I’m unsure how to make them seem less so. Any direction or literature towards that end would be helpful. I’m using sub surface scattering along with a noise bump mapping to give it some detailing.

Thanks

Not just brighter, but lit with some kind of lighting scheme. As elbriga states, this would look nice with a strong rim. That’s a light coming from behind the character at an angle. It will light up the edges. You need a key light about 45 degrees off the camera so that one side of the faces is lit. What you have now will probably do for general fill light.

It would be cool if the paples and feathers glowed, but they don’t. they’re just brighter in the compositor. There are nodes tricks you can play with both material and compositing that can make them glow.

The apple may well be from the “tree of knowledge” but I can clearly see that it’s an image plane painted in microsoft paint. The image is also too small and I can see pixelation. Just model it.

I would urge you to reconsider the white hair. It’s off putting. Is there a reason for it? You say it’s supposed to be white, but why? If they are meant to be old, then sculpt in some wrinkles. They could be “movie old” which means a couple wrinkles but still attractive.

If you want to post the blend I can see where things are at and offer very specific ideas on improvement. It’s fun, it’s a good start, there seems to be story behind it, so you just need to get that out.

It seems to me that you used a picture of woods at the background, and that the dolls are place close in front of it. This gives several problems.:

  • The hair on of the left doll doesn’t receive any light from behind, and therefore it doesn’t integrate well.
  • Looking at the hair, it seem to me that there is a point light placed above / in front the left dolls head, but when I look at a branch behind here on the left, the light is coming from the topleft.
    Skin like final fantasy; Not sure what material you used for the skin, but i am pretty sure there must be a translucent or an sss shader. Maybe you you use a bit less of it. It makes the the texture a bit blurry. When I look at some images of final fantasy I don’t see such translucency or SSS.

In case you use white eyelashes, could it be an idea if you use a bit of eyeshadow, so we can distinguish the eyelashes from the skin a bit better. The lips could use also a color; When looking at final fantasy images, I see the lips, eyes , etc are defined. ( not blurry ).

Yes the background is an image attached to a plane. And yes there is a branch on the tree mesh, if it seems off maybe it needs to come off. No, the apple is simply a mesh with nodes, nothing more. They are supposed to be young girls with hair as white as angel wings, but I can work on the coloring more. They have to be that way, the story calls for it. I’ve tried to attach the blend file, but it doesn’t seem to work. I even tried to zip it. Maybe it’s too big even zipped it’s 50mb. I did attach a screenshot. Some of my blurriness is from my compositing.


I’ve also added some more screenshots of the skin and skin nodes

Attachments


Heh, everyone jumped on this. It’s good to have feedback, hopefully you don’t get negative feeling of all this.

Something to think about is the book size and the front cover as a whole. Aspect ratio might not be suitable and it affects the composition, as does text


The text is likely to catch the first focus, nothing can be done with that and that’s alright, but what the viewer looks in the image itself is another matter. Not much feathers to speak of because they don’t fit when the image gets cropped for the book.

The first focus (after the text) could be planned and the bright feathers on a dark background don’t quite fit the job. They’re also all over the place so not a way to get the viewer focused. One of the dolls/girls is looking at the apple and that area could be a good candidate for it.

Not sure what the other one is doing. Their expressions and body language don’t quite tell what kind of moment is pictured. If you know, maybe exaggerate those a bit. It’s not very clear if the doll/girl on the left is happy/scared/focused/surprised of this glowing apple thing but the other one on the right doesn’t seem to care even if it were a glowing watch.

Lighting doesn’t quite reveal the forms. There was similar critique thread a while back - glowy things around on a dark image and lack of light flattening the whole thing. Introducing any light should give it more depth http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?369202-The-Jabberwocky

Thanks. No, I take feedback for what it’s meant to be, a person’s help to make it a better picture and me a better artist.
I was thinking about adding the text into the image itself similar to the feathers.

One is supposed to be excited on the apple, and the other is a bit reserve and just focusing on the feathers.

Ok fair enough. Then big thing jumping out at me is the add shader, which is rarely a good idea. Use a mix shader with glossy at near white. For skin you rarely go over .06 mix factor, and with hair usually no more than .15. At 50 mb you would need to use Dropbox. Drop in some area lamps and rotate them and jack the Strength until its about right. For the tree I’d look for a bark tet that better matches the toon style.

I’ve made some of the suggested changes. I’ll have to work on their expressions. I feel like I’m now not lighting the background enough now. But let me know if you like the changes I’ve made so far. Thanks


x

It’s better, for sure, but still needs lighting work. I can tell that there are some weird things going on with the nodes. Here’s an out of the box idea. The hair is supposed to be “white as an angels wings” I did this once and it had a cools effect. On the material for the hair, at the very end of the nodes right before it goes into the material output, put in a mix shader. Plug in you last noodle into the top and into the bottom put an emission shader, and experiment with the emission strenght,color, and the mix factor. In that way the hair is helping to light the scene and is given a true motivation of an angel. Next add a giant cube around the whole scene. Add a material and in the nodes, add a ‘volume scatter’ node and plug it into the ‘volume’ input on the material output. Make the density quite low, try .01, .1 , .3 and experiment with the color. Leave the surface empty. You will now get true volumetric scatter and glow and there will be a kind of halo around the head.

This is a subtle example of the glowing hair effect that I made:


This is the basic setupblend:

Your girl looks really cool by the way. I tried to add the cube and the volume scattering, but it add a lot of fireflies and more blur. I’ve tried to add some glow using compositing like before, let me know what you think of this.
Thanks

Attachments


This is coming together.

What story is the cover telling? The two figures seem to be standing side by side, but unaware of each other. They have no expressions to clue us in. Are they hiding, taking a break, pursuing someone?

Working on getting a better expression for the girl on the left. The one on the right is supposed to be interested in the feathers, and the one on the left is supposed to be excited about the apple.

Can you make the eyes of the one on the right track on of the feathers. Maybe tilt her head a little. Are feathers positive or negative to her? What does she read into what she sees of the feathers?

I felt she looked like she was tracked onto the second one down, but I can take another look. That’s the hard thing I’m having a problem with. If this was an animation she would probably be rolling her eyes in that scene. Not fully invested in any of it. She would care, but nothing too flamboyant. She could be considered a bit goth, if I was to assign her a archetype. In my Original scene I did of this I had her arms crossed. Do you feel that would say something further too you?

That might work. Arms crossed, hips tilted a little to indicate impatience. Head tilted, rolling the eyes away from the other, and move the feather to where her eyes would be pointed. Having the eyes track an empty might make it easier to aim them.