Velvet Sky Splash

[Lash L'Heureux]

Wahey, this is my first thread on WZ.

Unfortunately I am sat at home with the flu, so to prevent boredom I've spent the last hour and a half making the above. No real objectives for this one, just wanted to make a piece based around Velvet Sky.

I didn't include any text as I wanted to keep it looking minimalistic. One thing I would change, though, is the furthest-left image of Velvet. It's only now that I realise that the lighting doesn't fit in with the rest of the piece, so I'll either have to adjust that or use a different model altogether.

All comments/crits are appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Dr. Stinger A. Zoidberg]

When it comes to losing your "sig making virginity" here on the forums, I'd say that this is an excellent sig to make. To the naked eye, nothing is really wrong with it. But as you said, the render on the far left is just a bit too dark and the lighting doesn't match up. What I'd suggest is using some sort of filter, or just dodging it a bit to get it to match up. Moving it farther left would probably cause an awkward space in between the renders, and that just wouldn't look good. Another thing, and you said this in your critique of mine, is that there is some dead space in this graphic. Maybe you could've done something at the bottom to sort of balance everything out. Maybe putting some text, and setting it to a mode like screen would've helped without actually hurting the rest of the graphic. Also, I don't know if it's intentional or not, but the text in the lower right corner is hard to read. But something tells me that may just be your watermark. Very fine job, though. I look forward to more great things from you.

 

[Lash L'Heureux]

Another thing, and you said this in your critique of mine, is that there is some dead space in this graphic.

Cheers Stinger. I said negative space was good though dude, hehe.

The text at the bottom is hard to read as it is my signature and I have bad handwriting... it's just a final addition rather than something that I intended to be readable as this was just an image I made for fun rather than with any real purpose.

I think I will work with another picture of Velvet on the left hand side, or perhaps use the dodge tool to lighten the dark parts like you suggested. I'll re-visit it somewhen soon.

 

[Kayoh]

Cheers Stinger. I said negative space was good though dude, hehe.

The text at the bottom is hard to read as it is my signature and I have bad handwriting... it's just a final addition rather than something that I intended to be readable as this was just an image I made for fun rather than with any real purpose.

I think I will work with another picture of Velvet on the left hand side, or perhaps use the dodge tool to lighten the dark parts like you suggested. I'll re-visit it somewhen soon.

Fixing the render on the left shouldn't be too difficult, just lower the contrast a bit and tweak the brightness so it matches the other renders. It stands out so much because there's such a massive contrast in it compared to the other three.

I do have one question, though...what all did you use to make the background? Brushes? A stock image? That background is pretty sick. It looks like a combination of a simple Clouds stock with some heavy brushing and some extra sparkle brushes thrown in to add the starry effect. Very sick work, though, and anything with Velvet gets a positive mark from me, lol

 

[Lash L'Heureux]

Fixing the render on the left shouldn't be too difficult, just lower the contrast a bit and tweak the brightness so it matches the other renders. It stands out so much because there's such a massive contrast in it compared to the other three.

I do have one question, though...what all did you use to make the background? Brushes? A stock image? That background is pretty sick. It looks like a combination of a simple Clouds stock with some heavy brushing and some extra sparkle brushes thrown in to add the starry effect. Very sick work, though, and anything with Velvet gets a positive mark from me, lol

Thanks for this.

The background is a combination of stock photos which I have heavily adjusted in terms of levels, curves, colour balance etc, then blended and erased parts before finishing with some brushing in the neon tones.

I've actually re-done the piece with a different picture of Velvet which I feel ties in to the overall piece better. Let me know your thoughts:

 

[UltimateHitman]

Something I noticed, and I hope you get what I'm saying, is that there's too much bottom. That is, the space between the uppermost part of the top image and the border is less than the space between the bottom most part of the bottom image and the border. Pulling up the bottom to have less space between the image and border would make it look more uniform, even if it's only about an inch or so.

On to my opinion of it, I love it. I've always liked that "spacey" type look, too, so Velvet + "spacey" background = win.


Edit: maybe take out a portion of the middle section of the bottom instead of pulling the border up. It'd prob be best to keep that little patch of black in the bottom left corner to balance w/the top...