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StephOBrien — Echo Flower
#undertalefanart #undertale_echo_flower #echo_flower
Published: 2018-04-07 02:15:48 +0000 UTC; Views: 555; Favourites: 52; Downloads: 5
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Description
What was I supposed to be drawing? One echo flower for a panel in my Undertale fan comic, Just Cause.What did I draw? This.
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Comments: 27
Hello there, I'm here from ProjectComment to comment on this Echo Flower
First of all, you managed the contrast well enough, thus there is no doubt that the flower is glowing in the dark: good job! Also your lines are clean yet not symetrical, which is very good.
I think you could enhance the glowing effect by adding a slight glow outside of the lines/over the lines. We can't be too focused on something emitting light. The pitch black lines between two shiny petals do not feel absolutly right in that regard. The lines between the upper petals, glowing more than the lower petals, could benefit from a gradient to a lighter color the more upwards you go.
Grass is very tiny compared to the huge flower. It feels weird but as I'm not familiar with echo flowers, I believe it may be usual for echo flowers to be that big.
I'm less convinced by the background and the environment in general. I read below that the light dots are not stars, that the scene takes place underground. None of that is clear when looking at your art. The "horizon" (for lack of a better notion) line is very, very, very straight and sharp and does not feel natural. More often than not, horizon is a bit blurred because focus decreases with distance (because atmospherical perspective). Also, the dots not being stars should still look like dots of light I believe. The bigger ones could emit a sharper sparkle.
I believe a soft gradient on your black part would help built a sense of depth: darker on top, lighter where the ceiling/sky/whatever touches the soil/water/skating rink 
Last, I feel the flower is stuck into a too small frame. Some composition may improve the serenity vibe around the flower, for instance a bigger frame and the flower slightly un-centered.
Of course, keep in mind this comment and suggestions come with no idea of what you wanted to achieve and which artistic goals you pursue. Keep up the good work!
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Thank you very much for the feedback! I hadn't actually meant for the flower to be glowing in the dark, but I guess the strength of the highlights could have given that impression. Whoops! I do tend to put a glow outside the lines (or omit lines entirely) for things that emit light.
I agree that the pitch black lines were a mistake. A gradient probably would've been a good idea; I tried changing the color of the outline as a whole and didn't like the result, but a gradient in the center lines would probably have enhanced the upper petals' appearance without making the lower ones look weird. I'll keep that in mind for future situations like this.
Echo flowers are indeed huge. The canonical age of Undertale's protagonist isn't confirmed, but I HC them as being around eleven years old, and the flower's as tall as they are.
I probably did follow the in-game art a bit too closely when it comes to the horizon. In the game it's sharp and straight, but now that you mention it, I agree that I should've blurred it more, and probably varied its shape a bit. Thanks for the reminder to keep the interaction of distance and visual clarity in mind!
I did put a slight gradient in the black background, but I guess it was too slight, haha.
I do tend to crowed my subjects into too-small frames - probably a habit I picked up while routinely trying to cram all the necessary elements into comic panels. I'll try to remember not to do that in future images.
Thanks again for all the helpful advice!
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No problem, keep up the good work!
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It's so beautiful! You've really captured the style!
I don't know why, but the Echo Flowers sometimes make me think of the Heaven's Mirror flowers from 'Eternal Sonata', even thought they don't really look that alike. It could be the glow. (You might not know what I'm talking about, since the latter is probably a slightly obscure game, but don't worry; it's all complimentary about your work). Have a great day!
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Thank you very much!
I haven't played Eternal Sonata, but Google image search is very helpful. 
I did have a great day, and I hope you do, too.
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The image is simply stunning. I love how you chose this blue and used different shades. Your image successfully creates a peaceful mood. Even the color choices add to this mood, the blues that you chose created such a serene scene and the stars also added to that. The grass also baffles me. The subtle hue shifts help the image so much. The direction in which the grass is leaning towards also gives a feeling of a small breeze coming through. However, the things I wish you changed were the stars. More specifically, the larger stars. The light that it emits is fine, but I wish you went over it (or under it with another layer) with a simple cross/plus sign to make it look more like a star. The effect of making the stars glow would be even better if you used the cross-like design in another layer with the blending of "add". I also wish the flower was slightly tilted so that it really did look like the wind was blowing through. I do agree with the critique below me, the outline of the flower should've been a different color, other than black. Perhaps a lighter or a darker color of blue. In the end, it's a really beautiful piece C:
Also found this piece on projectcomment.deviantart.com/
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Thank you so much for the detailed compliments!
You make a good point about the white lights, though they aren't actually stars - this scene is underground, and I'm not quite sure what the lights in that section of Undertale are. Glittering gems, maybe? Fireflies? Bioluminescent spores? Who knows. You can see a screenshot here: nosimpleway.brontoforum.us/let… Still, they probably would've looked better with a pointed shine effect like the one you described.
I've never really tinkered with layer blending - I should play around with that at some point. I'm sure there are all kinds of handy things I could learn. Thanks for the suggestion!
I'll admit I hadn't taken wind direction into account - you make a good point. Granted, strong enough wind can leave some grass bent over even when it isn't actively blowing, but I should still keep the effects of the wind in mind when creating bent grass like this.
I agree that I should've made the outline lighter. Admittedly, that was just me being lazy - once I'd added the shading, I realized the outline stuck out like a sore thumb, but I wanted to move on to other drawings, so I didn't take the extra time to fix it. >_<
Thanks again for the compliments, and for the great advice! It was very helpful.
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I found this piece via
This is awesome! The echo flower's lineart is beautifully drawn and it's clear where the shading is. However, I would suggesting changing the color of the lineart a bit, since it seems a bit choppy with the blue of the flower. However, it's great that the flower was lighter at the top than at the bottom, which shows that you're fabulous at shading! The background is beautiful... personally I would prefer if there was more back there but otherwise it still looks great! The grass is awesome at the bottom of the flower, and the stars in the background are random and that's great!
Keep it up!
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Thanks for the compliments! Shading used to be one of my weak points, so it's really good to hear that I'm improving.
I agree, the lineart does break up the flower a bit more than I'd expected it to. I probably should've made it bluer, or maybe even eliminated it entirely, but I was kind of getting to the point of "it isn't perfect, but I want to move on to drawing something else now".
I kind of thought of putting more in the background, but I couldn't decide what. Something about the picture felt off, and I tinkered a bit, but didn't find anything that felt right to me. And the source material is pretty minimalistic, haha. Maybe I should've added some texture to the cave wall behind the flower, but every time I lightened the background I felt like it was competing too much with the focal flower. I'm still not sure what the right background for this one would have been.
Thanks again for the feedback. I appreciate it!
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np! Yeah you're definitly getting there!
Yeah after it takes a while for a piece its more like I just want to get this finished ASAP
And it definitly looks great! Personally I would add somthing like a waterfall or somthing (?) Maybe a ocean of blue water (?) Idk but it still looks great!
No problem!
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Hm... there are no oceans in the underground, at least not that I know of, but there are several waterfalls. Good idea!
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Thanks, I'm glad to hear that.
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Yay! Thanks for taking the time to say so.
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Should we tremble in terror?
"This." is rather sweet, I like how softlooking is shading and that grass blew my mind.
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Should we tremble in terror? Someone in the comic certainly is.
Thanks, I was going for a soft and cushy look for the petals. Photoshop does make it wonderfully easy to make good-looking grass.
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Thank you! "Beautiful if simplistic", sounds like a good description for a lot of the art in the game, so it seems fitting that it also applies here.
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You certainly make simple look beautiful, so awesome job!
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