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fallengc [2015-03-01 22:58:43 +0000 UTC]

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Okay, so I am FINALLY getting around to doing this. haha.
For the most part, neverrmind covered most of it in her critique, so I'll try not to just emphasize what they already said. I do agree that the cutting and blending of the actual horse needs a bit of work. I have mixed feelings about this new "smudging" trend. I think people smudge way too much, particularly in the face, and forget to re-add the muscle tone so their horses look more like horse-shaped blob-like putty and the cheek areas are often too accentuated making them look very unrealistic. The hooves I would probably blend in better by using a small, softer smudge tool and just blurring them. BECAUSE I'M LAZY. And it shows motion. Ears are clipped a bit tight and sharp.

wings: MY main focus was the wings. That is why i was quite impressed with it, even if your layers are bleeding a bit on the edges, the wing DETAILING is great. the rest will improve with practice, but I'm glad you're focusing on the little details even now, because that's where the real skill comes in. The rest is just practice. Very impressed. The only part of the wing i would fix is to 1. clip out the overlay layer bleed-over and 2. blend it better into the horse's body without just blurring it into oblivion. the color is slightly off, so to erase the edge where it connects to the shoulder with a 30% opacity soft eraser brush until it blends smoothly would be better, then using your mad detailing skills to add a few little feathers just in contrast at the transition of fur to feather.

hair: I see this a lot lately. It looks like "the fill in" method. Try to think on a more realistic level as far as hair. Hair is unruly, going in all directions (well, not quite all). The hair here is too smooth and uniform. In future manips, I'd like to see you mix it up a little more. Also bear in mind that ALL of his hair will not be on one side of his ears. It makes him look like his ears are on the same side of his head. Make more "clumps" breaking away from the uniform group of hair and some flyaways and it'll look a lot better. Try looking at some natural pics of horses running for references. Find a mane for, you like and copy it the best you can until you can do it on your own. The uniformity will be fixed once you get more practice with how you want it to flow and with lighting. which brings us to the next point...

lighting: neverrmind already touched on this pretty well, so i'll be quick.. The shadows aren't bad, but there aren't enough highlights in this image. Try to bear in mind the strength of your light source and highlight/shadow the horse accordingly. His belly COULD have a bit more shadow, there is no shadow of the wings or mane against the body. Not enough highlights in the front of the mane from the light source. This will REALLY add depth and dimension to your images once you get the hang of it.

painted detail: As I said before, the wing detailing is great. But I'd like to see you do the same with the rest of him. You have very detailed and excellent-looking wings, but not on the horse. This makes it inconsistent. Also, the crown on the ground has very little or no detail. It has no shadow. It is not sitting flat on the ground, unless you wanted it to be "falling" to the ground, where I would put a more suggestive angle on it. It needs more highlights and shadows to add dimension to it AND to suggest that it's made of gold instead of yellow play-dough.

the rest: His eyes are actually really great. Love the direction you took with them and it's very cool. Great color work and light source on the eye. I can tell you really focused on that. Now to focus on more of the big picture if you get what I mean. As far as the background, excellent work as well! I would like to see a few more highlights in the water and edges of the dirt (ridiculous detail work i always hate myself when I'm doing, but adds a lot to the image). I love the blurring of the far background to increase focus on your subject, a very wise idea. I also like what you did with the dirt kickup from the horse, but again, lighting, lighting, lighting. It took me a long time to get lighting down as okay as i have now (Navi is still waaaaay better than me at that). I would like to see the dust kickup have some segments of lighter/darker. not too many, just enough to give it more... dimension.

ANYWAY, so that's my critique. I hope nothing I said was too harsh and that you will take it all constructively and that I have helped you realize a few points that need work. As I said before, a LOT of this is just going to be practice, practice, practice! Sometimes I'll walk away from a manip overnight just to give myself a fresh look at it before I declare it "done." Sometimes you realize that in your excitement of the concept, you missed some of the execution. :3

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WITCH-D0CT0R [2015-02-27 10:38:33 +0000 UTC]

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Hi e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s… " width="15" height="15" alt="" data-embed-type="emoticon" data-embed-id="391" title=" (Smile)"/> unfortunately this is going to be quite breif.
So I can see a number of things that need work on this piece.
= Lighting
= Horse prep
= Shadow
= Hair
= Cutting

Lighting= The light source is in the top right corner. We should be seeing the light hitting the horses nose quite drastically, down the front of his neck and the front of his front legs. Under the wings (so the rump), the back of the legs should all be in shadow.

Horse prep= You have put in some nice detail but I feel its way to smudged looking. The wings youve blended well but if you look at the join it just looks quite like a lot of smudging or painting with one colour. The wings themselves have an odd, slightly unconvincing colour change and the highlights from the details are peaking out from them

shadow = because the light source is in the top left corner, we should be seeing the shadow stretching sort of back behind him, past the bottom left corner.

hair = Okay so looking at your hair, it all seems one big long straight slick of hair. both the tail and mane are this way. If you look at any horses mane you will notice it splays everywhere! you should try and create more flicks and curls in your hair to give it more of al lifelike appearance. sometimes following the originals stocks mane can help.

cutting = your cutting is pretty good but the ears are a problem. the right ear just looks more like a snipped triangle rather then a nice curvy ear. The horse stock is a feathered hors,e os if you dot plan on drawing the feathers out again then cut out the fetlock shape rather then leaving those snippy straight lines by the hooves.

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fallengc [2015-02-27 15:44:02 +0000 UTC]

I think the wings look great! Will critique later when I'm on my laptop. Hate critiquing on my phone. Lol

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Silver-Dreamer-Mist [2015-02-27 10:41:33 +0000 UTC]

The wings are stunning!!

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TheIceViking [2015-02-27 09:54:12 +0000 UTC]

looks really nice <3
good job flakes!

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lovelyskylark [2015-02-27 01:47:46 +0000 UTC]

Symmmm!!! This looks so great!
The crown is such a nice touch!!

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taivaankaarta [2015-02-27 01:19:13 +0000 UTC]

*screeches* No seriously, I just screeched.

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