Lesson for GothiComp 2011 --- use a better background.

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Light at the Horizon.

Warp Rift
Project Distant Darkness
Eldar MMS

GothiComp Hall of Fame
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176

But I use solid black backgrounds and that seems to work out alright

These seem to be quite the departure from your typical paint work. Any reason for the change in style?

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-Vaaish

Yeah, black works... In GothiComp I had this flowery yellow soft purple - ish background....


Which style change? I hope better. lol


The colours are the same as the flower are (the poisenous Nightshade) - yellow - purple.

Plus my Corsairs are in need of a re-paint I think, quite poor. So I decided to some odd squadrons in new fresh colours. Since it are just a band of Corsair there is no law everyone should stay in the same colours.

_________________
Light at the Horizon.

Warp Rift
Project Distant Darkness
Eldar MMS

GothiComp Hall of Fame
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176

These seem more varied in color that your previous ships. I think it's an improvement in some areas but I think you could do a few minor changes to make them even better.

For instance, the wings turned out quite nice and having the bits of yellow help tie them to the middle of the ship. I think it might have worked well to draw that up into the center of the ship as well either with the cannon barrels or with the gems. That brings me to another observation with the greens. I'm not so fond of green on them since you have more red tones on the ship, but, in any event, they seem flat painted. I think that you could have had a much better effect by leaving the recesses dark and highlighting the ridges with the green. The last bit that jumps out at me is the joint on the large green gem and the hull. right now it's a pretty sharp line right there which is nice and clean, but doesn't help break the gem from the hull. It would help to add shading around the base of the gem to emulate shadows and help smooth the transition as well as provide a buffer to make the gem stand out more.

See the scarabs I just posted. In the closeup you can see the darker edge around the eyes help make the glowing green distinct. Without that line they would blend in with the rest of the faces. Probably the easiest way would be to mix a bit of black with scorched brown or dark flesh to wash in there and feather to blend smoothly.

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-Vaaish

See, that is grand, getting advice to improve, thnx.

To summarize:
* I did darken the recess of the green things on the wings but this should be darker.
* The large gem is the bridge. but I made a green, well because of the flower, haha.

what do you exactly mean with drawing up in the centre?

_________________
Light at the Horizon.

Warp Rift
Project Distant Darkness
Eldar MMS

GothiComp Hall of Fame
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176

I'd start far darker on it, almost black, and then work up to the bright green. Something it's taken me quite a long time to get right is that many times you don't have to completely cover something in a color for your eye to read it as a particular color. (I still haven't managed to perfect this with blue!).

Drawing up simply means adding more of the wing color to the center yellow section to both break up the large amount of yellow and tie the center to the wings visually.

looking back at the photos again, I think you would vastly improve the appearance with more shading overall in areas like the base of the gems, darkening panel lines, adding a dark blue line between the yellow and blue where it joins near the aft section of the ship, painting the deep recessed yellow more of a brown to emulate shadow and building it up to a brighter yellow as you move towards the upper edge.

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-Vaaish

To be honest the gems all started really dark green and I did layer up to a more bright green (on the upmost parts more white-green then anything else). But I felt the dark green contrasted to much with the ship and jumped out way too much for my taste. So I made it less darker on purpose.

If you look at the right destroyer in the top picture, you'll notice that their are flamey kind of purple lines on the yellow fore section. (my wifes idea which I tried, but I was not impressed by my own skill to do them properly) On the GC picture they are better seen:


And the inspiration:

(the flower grows red poisenous berries, these start out green, so I made the guns red: aka poison)

The Hellebore and Aconite will be similar interesting to be inspired by the flower but the Hemlock will be very hard to do.

_________________
Light at the Horizon.

Warp Rift
Project Distant Darkness
Eldar MMS

GothiComp Hall of Fame
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176

these look wonderful

Thanks a bunch.

_________________
Light at the Horizon.

Warp Rift
Project Distant Darkness
Eldar MMS

GothiComp Hall of Fame
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176