Another chainmail piece

[Wolvorine]

Well okay, it's not the real focus of the piece, but this was done right after the vikingjarl piece, after some helpful tips from Jon H.

http://members.fortunecity.com/wolvorine/Graphics/ravenchief-01b.JPG

Comments welcome. :)

[Wolvorine]

Sorry for the triple-post, dunno how it happened, and it won't let me delete the extra 2.

[Armin D. Sykes]

I've deleted the other two threads for you. I hope I got the right ones.

Armin

[Woolsey]

good work!

[Tomasz Zieba]

I don't like the way his finger rests on the sword. The rest is fine.

[Samurai]

Good job! Significantly better than the first one... it is obvious by the pose that you planned the background this time. Nice textures on the different surfaces. Quite a nice drawing!

[Jon H]

I agree with Samurai - this is a great improvement, Owen. The whole scene has clearly been thought out - he's interacting with the background which is good. There's also a story going on here, which gives us pause to think about the piece for a bit longer (which has to be a good thing). The composition is nice - not just about drawing a figure in the middle of the page.

The materials handling is better too - or maybe thats a better scan - whichever - its all part of improving the appearance of your work!

The mail looks much more "real" in this one. The nasty part is that mail links are pretty small - some of yours are little on the big size - but that's a nitpick, not a serious crtiticism!

I agree with the hand thing - maybe another look at his finger would bring it all together.

Keep up the hard work!

[Wolvorine]

Armin: Thanks for the clean-up work. :)

Woolsey: Much appreciated. :)

Tomasz: Very brief, but you have a fine point (I'll go into that a bit more below).

Samurai: I did do some work for the textures to be different enough that (hopefully) nothing would blend in with the foreground figure and blur his edges, and I've always liked the funny non-cross-hatch kinda thing I did for the wall, I've no idea why I don't seem to use the technique very often. :)

Jon H: You've caught me, I planned the entire pic out rather meticulously. In large part, this pic was an answer (if only to myself) to the (mostly very correct) critizism I receieved for the viking jarl -- so I sat in the middle of the room twisting my arm & shoulder around in a similar fashion to this pic, trying to see how the arm should fall and all that. Very silly looking. :) I even put some vague thought into what was on the map. ;P As for the mail links, you're right, I'll need some more practice with this technique to work the rust out of my fingers.

As to the finger... ahh that rogue finger. Tomasz & Jon have me on that too (how fun that others here see where things went wrong). That finger wasn't supposed to exist in the way it does, it was going to be just like any other finger, happily gripping that hilt.. until I got the sword drawn in completely, and realized there was no way that finger was going to fall right... I had to curl it up over the hilt... and it didn't work. The 1 place in the pic I didn't plan out, and see what it got me. ;P

Okay, I really have to start replying to other peoples' posts, but sometimes it can be tough to find something helpful to say -- so many pic either I can't find anything someone else hasn't mentioned, or I haven't a clue how to fix the problem, and where's the creative crit. in that? =)

[Noel Murphy]

I have things I want to say but am too tired and totally pissed off to write anything so I'll leave it until I have some time later.
I should say it has nothing to do with you BTW, it's my scummy day job.:mad:
later
I bet you just can't wait:p

[Tomasz Zieba]

To Noel Murphy

Do you know what never ceases to amaze me? People who are too tired and pissed off to write anything long, but who always have enough energy to write that they are too tired and pissed to write.:confused:

[Wolvorine]

Noel: Sure, can't wait. :)

Tomasz: A lot of people don't get it, but from my own experience and personal feelins toward the matter, bothering to post that one is too tired & pissed to post is kind of like a place-holder, marking your spot of inclusion for later and all that.

[Noel Murphy]

Well Tomasz, if you'd just spent 9 hours working your ass off moving tons of steel around a factory you wouldn't be so quick to be amazed. And yes, Wolvorine gets what the point was.
Since I am not exhausted now I will try to remember what the hell I was going to say.
Improved from the last one but your mail is still not coming upto scratch. The mail around his legs looks even more like cloth than the first one. You won't get fold lines like that at all around the hips. It looks like patterned cloth. Your links should be circular and smaller, they are too big and they just look like rows of curves. Mail is small rings all interconnected. I think you are not taking the time and patience that is needed on such an intricate subject, you seem to be practicing the shortcut without doing the long winded way first. I don't want to whale on you because I think you are pretty brave taking this on.
The rest of it is ok. His hair is very good but his eyes are too big. The pose is fine and I think the errant finger is fine but the shadow on the map is just odd, it's running parallel to his arm. The armour is ok but the elbow parts would seem to me that they would stop him from bending his arms too far before jamming rather painfully into it.
Hope I was some help and not some bad man ripping the hell out of your self-confidence.

[Wolvorine]

Originally posted by Noel Murphy
Improved from the last one but your mail is still not coming upto scratch. The mail around his legs looks even more like cloth than the first one. You won't get fold lines like that at all around the hips. It looks like patterned cloth. Your links should be circular and smaller, they are too big and they just look like rows of curves. Mail is small rings all interconnected. I think you are not taking the time and patience that is needed on such an intricate subject, you seem to be practicing the shortcut without doing the long winded way first. I don't want to whale on you because I think you are pretty brave taking this on.

It's a tough subject to mail. I'd love to be able to hold a nice piece of chainmail and examine it up-close, but I just don't have that sort of resource, sadly. But I shant quit! hehe

The rest of it is ok. His hair is very good but his eyes are too big. The pose is fine and I think the errant finger is fine but the shadow on the map is just odd, it's running parallel to his arm. The armour is ok but the elbow parts would seem to me that they would stop him from bending his arms too far before jamming rather painfully into it.

The left eye came out about how I wanted it, slightly off but not freaky. The right eye suffered from a hand-twitch at the wrong moment, and being one of the last things added, egads I'd have had to start the pic all over. :) The errant finger bugs me a bit, but I hope I learned how it got off-track. The shadow running parallel to the arm on the map is the shadow of the arm, I'm assuming that's the one you're referring to. So it's supposed to run parallel to the arm. As for the elbow guards, I'm guessin the one that's tripping you up in the left arm again, because I screwed that all up. LOL It wasn't until after I'd finished and scanned that I noticed I'd put it on the wrong side of that arm. The way it is it's guarding the inner-elbow, and yeah it would block arm movement.

Hope I was some help and not some bad man ripping the hell out of your self-confidence.

Hehe, well I was somewhat brave just to post this pic, there were a few really glaring problems that I was aware of before I put it up, but it's been so long since I'd done a piece not on commission that I just slapped it up as soon as I finished it. :) That all the comments have really mostly had something good to say along with the critiques is something of an achievement. hehe