Art - Top 5?

[hwango]

Still trying to decide which art to print out and take with me if I head off to GenCon...and I'm seriously leaning towards going right now. I'm thinking I'll try to make a better background for the Collectors and take that. The anthro lion, obviously. Azhar, chrinos, in one form or another. After that, I'm not sure. Katsu? Blood of Ice? Probably the dragon I made for the tower as one of the black and white pieces. Suggestions and opinions welcome. Just about anything worth considering viewable on my gallery, if you need a reminder of what I've done.

http://hwango.deviantart.com/gallery/

Comments

[krzzl.livejournal.com]

I would pick things that you think are really good, and show a range of skills. I love all of your stuff, so it's hard to decide on a few! I need to go to bed soon, but I'll try to look some more tomorrow.

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

Azhar as the desktop.

For teh other color pieces, take Summer Dragon and Katsu. Blood of Ice is cool, but overstocking the folio with werewolves gives the impression you can't draw anything else. Katsu's the best of the full body humans you have. I would leave off that he's supposed to be an Exalted, EXCEPT when you talk to White Wolf. Remember, they want to imagine you drawing their companies characters, not someone elses. Since you don't have a lot of humans, Katsu's going to have to stand in for everybody.

For black and white, I'd suggest the Midnight Werewolf, despite it having the little splash of color and being a werewold. It has a well rendered hand, which are notorious difficult to do. It shows off both expression and fine detail work, despite being older and just a head shot.

For other black and whites, you don't seem to have that many on Deviantart, or archived on your main website. The Tower is probably the best bet, resized down. I do have one concern that it looks oversmoothed in a few places, which makes you look a bit inexpert with your tools.

Fortress of the Deathlord would probably work well...if you crop out most of the empty background. It looks unfinished. However, it does show off you can draw a building. Having done the art direction for Rage, the ability to draw a BUILDING is right behind "ability to draw a human" on the desirability meter.

To finish out the black and whites, I'd go back and finish detailing the Giant Lobster. Yes, the lobster. It's boringly mundane, but it's a hard creature to draw and shows additional range. You can probably finish detailing it in a few hours.

I would also strongly suggest doing one additional black and white... a self portrait. Or of a friend. Practically every RPG book includes headshot of major NPCs in black and white. You've got nothing like that currently in your archived stuff and it's a staple they'll probably be looking for. Human head shot. If desperate, you could greyscale Azhar, but a straight up black and white line work version would probably fit more with what most RPG companies use.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice!

[hwango.livejournal.com]

...by the way, are those in addition to the anthro lion, or do you not think the lion came out well enough to use?

Also, why the Azhar desktop? I like it better cropped that way, but do you also like the border and/or coloring? I planned to take a version of it cropped similarly, but without the color added. Do you think the color and/or border add a lot to that one? Maybe just the color?

I am very low on black and white, unfortunately, particularly things with full compositions. Also, a lot of my human pictures are old, and suck. I kind of cringe at the old Midnight Werewolf, since there are a lot of things I'd do differently now, and the proportions are a bit screwy. Maybe if I have time to spiff it up a little I could take that.

Thanks again.

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

I like both the color and the border. It makes it look very distinct like a portrait, which is what a lot of RPG illustrations consist of.

Strangely enough, the frame also makes it look a bit more three dimensional.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Oh, and one other question...

"The Tower is probably the best bet, resized down. I do have one concern that it looks oversmoothed in a few places, which makes you look a bit inexpert with your tools.

Do you mean the rocks on the tower, or the airbrushing on the dragon, or something else entirely?

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

The dragon looks the most over airbrushed. It has that very, very shiny very smooth look that screams "I am using the smudge tool!" even if you weren't. It just looks a bit messy. It's the digital equivalent of looking like you dragged your hand through the paint.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Hah, that's so odd. Nope, no smudging. Lots of airbrush, but no smudging. = )