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Equivirial — Champion Iris
#pokemonfanart #haxorus #irispokemon
Published: 2017-05-16 03:01:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 1354; Favourites: 30; Downloads: 5
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Description
I remember Iris's battle being a lot of fun. I hadn't played White version so I didn't even know she was a gym leader and was totally shocked to see her here.Related content
Comments: 9
LONG overdue critique is finally here, sorry it took longer than i thought it would >.>
ok, at first glance, i don't really see much wrong with it. the composition is nice,the colouring is nice, and it has a nice background with good perspective. so let's break this down!
iris: i don't really have any issues with her body, but maybe one or two things about her head. first off the hair, i think adding lineart around it wasn't necessary, since it's hair and it's not really a solid shape, but rather something that flows around in all directions, and the lineart makes it look like it's made out of spikes, rather than strands. the detail within the hair is fine tho. another thing are her eyes, they... stare... right into... my soul... lol but seriously, they're huge. that's usually fine, but here she looks like she's hypnotized, i think the pupils are way too large, and it would be better to shrink them a bit.
the pokemon: they all look pretty good (i especially like the details on archeops' fur!), but druddigon's anatomy bothers me a bit. his hind leg looks like he has no knee, you'd imagine him waddling around like a penguin, rather than walking 
shading: the shading is fine, although i think you could be a bit bolder with it, the difference between dark and light isn't that pronounced here, so it might be hard to make out the light source. the only nitpick i have is that the drop shadow needs to be darker, especially right around the feet, since it kinda looks like they're floating. i can see there is some shading, but don't be afraid to do more, so that it's actually more visible.
another detail, you forgot (i think) to blur out a part of the blue orb left in the background, the black outline sticks a bit out. but that's easily fixed~
there ya go, i hope this was helpful, i tried to cover as much as i could. you're definitely a good artist, and you can only get better!
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Yeah you're right about druddigon needing a knee. I had no idea what kind of anatomy "joined at the side" legs like druddigon and haxorus had and was kinda just making "blob" legs because of it.
The end's of Iris's hair were really bugging me too. Like I have no idea how people create soft ending strands. I'm not sure if I should use the smudge tool, or paint the ending strands individually, or use a layer mask and cut in. idk I guess trial and error it will be!
ooops, I did forget to blur out the half of the blue circle in the back.
I see what you mean about me being too safe with the shading. The reason I did that was because I was trying to avoid blacking out Iris's face too much, so I made all the shadows from the back-light lighter to compensate, but now I see that the picture isn't really unified - like how they now have the floating look.
And thank you! I appreciate the help and the effort you put into this.
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i'm not a digital artist, so i can't suggest ways of painting strands digitally unfortunately, but it's always good to leave lineart out when you're doing hair, otherwise it always looks like a cape or a helmet. painting each ending strand individually sounds a bit tedious, but would probably get the job done
iris's face is fine tho (aside from the too big eyes) so you could have been bolder with the shading. but i'm glad this helped!
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Ah, time for an impromptu critique!
I love how Iris's dress billows out like that! Also, her semi-transparent ribbons look amazing, man~
Her expression looks like she's super excited to meet her newest challenger ;D
Maybe Hydreigon's wings and Iris's hair could be a little bit more defined? More lights to give them contrast against the background. I see that you've included highlights, but perhaps make them lighter. It'll help define shapes. Good job with the backlighting, it's really hard to perfect, isn't it! You seem to have a good knowledge of shadows.
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Thank you for the help! I have a really hard time with hair in general (It looks so easy until I try it myself) Especially when trying to add highlights to dark hair. I've tried adding diffuse highlights but the hair ends up looking grey'sh. And when I try to end highlights with small individual lines it ends up looking wiry. I guess I'll just have to take better note of how other people highlight dark hair. I noticed on your Champion Cynthia drawing you had lines following the hair direction, but there weren't thin separations within the highlight -- a kind of blend between between the totally diffuse/blurred highlighting and individual lines highlights I tried. Plus you used different opacities of the same highlight technique to make it less abrupt, cuz it'd be odd if the highlight died out immediately. That was for blonde hair but I'll test that out in the future. btw, Cynthia's pose in that drawing exudes confidence and I love it.
Archeops gave me grief because it appears a bit too defined to me. Like given how blurred the background is and how far back Archeops is, I'd expect it to be a bit hazier and out of focus. I blurred it a bit, but I really struggle with making edges look soft. This can be seen in the hair too. I've tried using the smudge tool to pull the ends of the hair&fur out, but it always ends up looking really pokey. Idk maybe I'll try using layer masks to try and reveal some looser hair near the edges (painting colour directly on to the canvas just normally with the brush is really hard for me)
The ribbons were surprisingly easy actually. All I did was add noise to a solid colour, added a lighter outline, and then set the whole thing to an overlay blend mode. Also, I didn't do it here, but I love how useful the "add noise" filter is for adding glitter. Like, first duplicate an object and add uniform, monochromatic noise to it (I have the amount set to about 40%), then add a layer mask to hide it so that we start out looking at the object without white noise, now in the highlight areas of the object, slowly start making the noise layer visible, to me it looks like there are little specs reflecting extra light in the highlights. idk, some downloadable texture would probably work better tho
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Definitely, adding noise is one of the best Photoshop tips out there! (saves lots of time in many cases!)
And I'm not completely sure how I even got the hair XD
ixjackiexx.deviantart.com/gall…
She's so good at drawing hair and shading! I try, but I can never get carefree lines and perfect shading like her....;__;
And I loved drawing Cynthia's pose, thank you! <3
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