New Painting: <Heroes, '42>
2yr
Yiming Wu
A recent painting I just finished a few days ago. Inspired by some lighting conditions of my school dormitory apartments. Also it's #marchofrobots so I figured let's just do a weird robot-ish piece :D Characters are still a bit wonky, I don't really plan to nail that down really accurately, but rather capture a mood. Overall, I think the global illumination/occlusion/reflections are a bit not there, because the colours of those two robots don't really want to mix pretty well, and the orangy secondary reflection don't show pretty well. Maybe because at early stages I didn't nail those down. Could use a bit more aggressive gesture on the wing on the far side tho. Done in MyPaint. Size ~11700px wide.
Reply or ask for help
Drop images here to attach them to the message
All posts
Newest
Liandro
Really cool work, @Yiming Wu! I love the acting, the staging and the overall visual concept! Two little things catch my eye as possible adjustments you might like to consider: 1) I feel there might be a bit too much information around the center of the image, which makes my eye stumble a bit: the robots are big and detailed while there’s also some strong value contrast on the near characters, and I feel these things compete a bit with each other for visual attention. The leaf textures and the shadow shapes on the building and on the wall far back are also pulling me a bit away from the center of interest. One thing that could help lower the noise and establish a clearer focal point would be to choose one area to feature and try to simplify everything else around it some more. 2) I really like the idea of creating a strong size contrast between the human characters to convey a powerful sense of scale for the robots, but I get the feeling that the near characters might be a bit oversized when I compare them to the building on the right: they’re almost at the same depth plane as the building, yet it seems as if they’d be too big to go through the doors on it. Also, I’m curious: that sequence of numbers near the right corner, is that your signature or is it supposed to be a date record as we’d see in some old photo cameras? (I thought you might perhaps be thinking of your painting as if it was as scene photographed by someone on the street or something like that). Great job overall!
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Yiming Wu
Hi Liandro! Thank you for the suggestions :D Indeed I didn't quite get the distribution of detail right. I tend to overdraw stuff. And I need to optimize my way of sketching by including more "blending" between shapes so they appears to be flowing and connected, this specific image I did I think it's rather disconnected between elements, almost as if those robots are pasted onto it. Global illumination/reflect light should be more prominent, I consider the green a weird color choice as I can't really mix a nice "orangy" green there, so there's that... In hindsight I actually need to get those color/illumination mixing at the sketching stage so it won't be that hard to tint when I get into later stages. The size is weird. I tend to draw big things in the back to show a kind of sense I don't really know how to describe in English lol... So sometimes they don't really appear to be feasible. The sequence of numbers are indeed as mimicry to old camera date stamps... I though the orange overlay on top of some image elements looks quite neat :D It's not a fixed style or anything, I'm also experimenting on including other information on there, but I don't want it to be visually disturbing either.
Reply
Andrew Joseph Keith
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Yiming Wu
Thanks Andrew!!
Reply
Dan B
Great concept! Mecha fighting is always cool. Feedback: with the two humans, the guy in grey should have his right hip raised as that's bearing his weight. At the moment his right leg looks 'stumpy.' Also, are these two supposed to care that the mechs are fighting or is this so common they're just like 'eh?' They look happy. For the mechs colliding, I would add some dust or debris or something to indicate the impact. At the moment they look a bit gently placed rather than smashing into each other. I'd also push a bit darker with the shadows around the focal point to further draw focus. I like the little touch of the person taking a pic on their phone :p I also like how the red building line leads the eye there to notice it. I was going to suggest removing the old pair of shoes, but I think they add a narrative touch by highlighting that people going about there day exist among this conflict.
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Yiming Wu
Hi Dan! Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I always have a hard time doing figures. I should try nail the drawing down a bit more tightly before I go in. Sometimes it's pretty hard to keep a certain gesture while painting over stuff. Funny about the mech colliding, I didn't actually visualize them with a strong action, they are sort of like a static sculpture, but also not really. I'm trying to find this visual balance where it's supposed to depict an action scene but also it seems like the time of it stopped and the scene can be viewed like a visitor. I've seen some paintings by other artists have this quality so I'm trying to get that as well. The shoe there is mostly for the sake of providing a foreground silhouette. At one point I thought let me just try painting a defocused shape. but it didn't feel very natural either.
Reply
@paper
Hello @Yiming Wu ,This is a pretty good picture,your color scheme kinda remind me of how Krent Cushart.though I think the biggest problem I see with this painting is that you put too much detail on the shadow area,particulary on the mech.For example,observe this sketch by sinix design,it may look like sinix has put a lot of detail in the mch,but see further and you noticed how he mostly uses big black shadow shapes (he also has a great video on that if you're interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJkIaMECW6c) I also noticed the problem on my previous critism are,such as boring edgeplay.So here's an overpainting of what my personal solution is,where I try to make more soft edge and add more blue color notes so it unify further. But other than that,this is pretty good!PLease keep going,you're doing a good job :D
Write reply...
Drop images here to attach them to the message
Yiming Wu
Thank you paper! I am actually not familiar with Krent Cushart... I shall check it out. Yeah I seem to put too many stuff in the shadow area. I think it's because I didn't push the darkness very deep, then it left me some room to play in those regions. I tried to darken the immediate regions surrounding the characters, but yeah the details in the mech seems to be a bit distracting, I could dull it down more. I like how you patched up the sky as well. it gives interesting texture. I never thought of doing that much. Maybe that's why I tend to just add structures because "there's something there". XD
Reply
Help!
Browse the FAQs or our more detailed Documentation. If you still need help or to contact us for any reason, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
Your name
Email
Message