CGAN August 2015 Challenge - Ganymede - WIPs

Kodabble: Yay, someone's doing a space picture! That's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of but I couldn't think of how to make it look interesting. But you're making it look great! That sharp jagged foreground gives it a real sense of dynamism and action even though there's no action happening. Do you have all your maps and textures ready?

Cherry: Amazingly, even though it's still sketchy, that does have a Greek look to it! That strong nose and the curly hair really hit the spot.
I don't envy you having to do that raised arm. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Armpits are evil!
So very difficult. Find as much reference as you can and very good luck with it.

3D scene is looking awesome so far Kod, very cool setup, looks like a lot of polys in that mesh to render that much detail. The perspective looks spot on too, nice

Cherry greek look sounds intriguing, I like the action of your scene so far, showing movement with the eagle snatching him. Are you going to keep them the same size? Maybe make him a bit smaller to show how much larger the eagle is, or is he human sized? Look forward to seeing it develop

So I changed mine up, more interesting composition I hope, I really want to get the moon in the background, star wars style hopefully!

Thanks Val & Micro Well I don't envy myself for painting his arms, too. xD If everything goes wrong I'll turn this in a cartoonish painting like Hercules from Disney. So there aren't any defined muscles anymore.
I'm also not so sure about the size of eagle and man. I saw a lot of paintings by the old masters where Ganymed is the same size as the eagle so the eagle is more powerful than big. But I also really like your new sketch micro because the eagle is amazingly big and great and all dominant!

It will be a surpise for everyone how this will go on.

Hey guys, thanks for the warm welcome and all of the insightful comments regarding my last post, I've done a little more work on my entry - I've decided to ink and color mine, still in the inking phase - would you believe I decided to go this route because I thought it would be quicker?! - wow, is my face red, anyways, hopefully I'll finish the inks soon and then I can start on the colors - which I've never done before - "Gulp" - still I have this rather instructional DVD, what could possibly go wrong...heh...

I'm just using artistic license to do whatever size, and details Cherry, you should go with what you like best in yours.

Robin, your character is coming along great so far, solid line weight and like the shading a lot. I just watched some vids on applying color too. Try to stay away from overly saturated colors, pick colors that are complimentary on the color wheel, its a good direction to go in.

Going with natural colors on mine, applied a color layer over top of my black and white wip to see what works. Not much there right now, but some values and colors, this is the way I work best because I have to get ideas down quick otherwise I forget what idea i'm trying to get across. Not a big sketcher but i'm starting to study more there, mostly 3D shapes to get used to thinking that way on paper.

Robin: That's looking much bolder now. When doing this kind of inking I can never work out which parts to make solid black and which to leave white in order to shape the right form. (Nerdy Aside: And that dilemma always reminds me of those map colouring problems from old maths lessons.) But you seem to making all the right choices there. Keep it up

Micro: I always like the way you get that dappled light effect, it combines a kind of natural beauty with something epic and here it's the eagle that is definitely epic. The stiffness of the wings and neck are making it look slightly static and statuesque but flexing the joints even just a little bit will add a little energy.

Had a bit of a disaster with mine. Artrage threw a hissy fit over lack of memory and corrupted a layer and then the file, losing a couple of days' work. So I'll have to resort to painting over the jpeg I posted here a few days ago. Not ideal but ... <shrug>

Thanks Val,I really am mostly using the dodge tool, I know it's a bad habit to get into but it gets my idea across fast, then I can just paint over with a light brush. The eagle is still looking stiff, but I think the background is going in a better direction to what I have in mind now.

After switching to Photoshop (and its better memory usage) I think I've now got the pic back to where it was before the previous crash. I've put some variation of colour in the sky to make Zeus look cloud-y and I've been slowly building the detail in the eagle.
Just looking at it again now I think the face of Zeus may be a little big from this perspective, I'll have a play around with that next time, and the eagle looks a bit too dark against the background. I think some shadows and light rays might help with that but that won't be done until the end.
Also you may have noticed that Ganymede seems to have done a runner! Don't know why, it's not as if the big eagle is going to fly off with him- Oh, wait a minute, that's exactly what's going to happen!
I will try to coax him back into view later but I'm still not certain about which pose he'll be striking.

Val- I like how this is coming along. As far as Zeus' head I think the facial features are good but he is lacking a neck...not one that shows, but the spacing between his shoulder location and head position. This is a tough problem to solve in that you can't just raise his head as it's at the top of the canvas. And lowering the body will put his hand either in tangent with the eagle's wing of hidden by it. Perhaps making him overall a bit smaller in scale and then you would have room to do either one.
Well done on the foreshortening of his arm. Looks great.
Eagle is looking good as well and the raptor's right foot is nicely shaped with the left to be worked on?
Hope you can find Ganymede soon

You're absolutely right, hobbyhorse. I've lost the neck behind the beard. I think it's also linked to the problem of the size of the face. I spent too much time zoomed in while working details and I forgot the overall view of anatomy and perspective. Memo to self: keep viewing your picture at all scales while working on it.
I think both issues can be solved in the same way. I've just had a little practice run on my tablet and shrinking the face a bit actually creates some surrounding space allowing me to move it up a bit and imply the existence of a neck behind the beard.
Thanks for spotting that problem.