CGAN March 2018 - Roman Gods - WIPs

Thanks, CG for the crit Very helpful. Something hadn't been really selling me on the background, but your specific point made it click. I am hoping now that I've messed around with it, it's setting a bit better. I'm getting super close to done. There's more detail work on the owl, probably some attention to the skin tone liveliness and that spear haft I keep neglecting. Probably a few odds 'n ends with the metal line work as well just to clean it up a bit. This will be my last post here, though. Going for broke to finish today or tomorrow.

HUGE improvement on the background, love the new update! Excellent brushstrokes and value work there. Looking forward to seeing the next update!

So I've picked this up again tonight - I'm not loving it but the deadline is fast approaching and I'm fed up with 'almost' completing challenges. Still a ways to go - just the small issue of trying to get across the idea that the scene is set underwater, finish the background, give him some legs, design a more fitting hammer and finish off his belt and skirty type thing.
No pressure!

If you're still worrying about making it seem underwater then bubbles will help. Some around the swinging hammer and some more fizzing around the glowing metal will do the trick.
But as I said before, it already does look underwater to me.

Legs would be good and a hint of nipples (if gods have those, you never know...)
Maybe a bit of heat haze/wirliness in the water over the volcano...

I agree with Valence, though. The colouring and flow of his hair already suggests underwater quite well

It would be nice if gods didn't have nipples. It would have saved me quite a lot of hours of failure in my pic.
It was going so repeatedly bad the other day that I considered giving my two-faced Janus a bra to cover it up!

You know, Atto, you could also just extend the anvil and make it something massive to skip having to deal with leg work (I know it may seem cheap, but in all fairness, there's the deadline to consider and I don't think it would take away from the work). As for the underwater thing, I agree with the others. You've got the right tones, I think some loose coral looking structures in the background would work and some water shimmer haze/heat, bubbles and maybe some little seaweed or bottom feeder critters creeping about the forge or anvil would work.

Try looking up some images of underwater volcanic activities or steam vents. May help give you some ideas to sell it.

Valence: You better submit or I will be very put out

Wish granted.

wow, you've been forgetting to post quite a few wips between the last one and your final, I think. You keep belittling yourself but it looks really well done to me. You even managed a very realistic nipple! :p

I think I'd like to see a version where the bg colours are flipped just to see if that makes it pop more (old, cool colour guy against warm bg and young warm colour guy against cool bg...). That's just a thought, though

For a long, long time it looked exactly like that last wip (but with the hair added) and all my early efforts at doing that fleshy join were truly horrible, far too embarrassing to post. So I ended up going back to that wip and restarting several times and it felt like posting another would be pointless if I was just gonna go back to that point and start again.
It wasn't until I extended the canvas that it started to make some progress and then the nipple thing started to annoy me! Not only did it change shape and colour, it moved around quite a bit too until finally settled right ... there.

And, yes, I agree, with another week (or two) I too would like to experiment with that background and also add some kind of symbolism or framing to explain the figure. I'd be able to do so much more with my pics if I didn't waste so much time correcting mistakes.