"Daughter Of Krypton" - (Poser/DC work)
By
8baller,
Posted on: 2008-08-24 22:57 in Multi-Media Fan Creations
Faved, desktopped! The wife's Mac laptop is now Shulerfied! 
Wow.... Very cool.
In an effort to constructively criticize, the only thing that I really notice is that her expression seems a little... well.. plastic, at least as compared to some of your previous work - for example, Crimson Storm.
That being said, it is still a beautiful piece, and still have to pick my jaw up off the ground.
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Faved, desktopped! The wife's Mac laptop is now Shulerfied!
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what he said..
except it's not his wifes laptop here but the TA desktop of doom!
Jesus Doug that is a sweet render! I agree with Mike on the expression a bit though but for me it doesn't detract from the overall piece at all.
You managed to outdo yourself again Doug! Great tribute to Mr. Turner right there.
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...the only thing that I really notice is that her expression seems a little... well.. plastic...
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I messed with the face a lot, and having her gritting her teeth, yelling, or anything else didn't seem to fit. The Superman/Supergirl family don't seem to express much since everything is so easy for them. I wrinkled the brow to show some determination, but possibly not enough.
Nothing is set in stone. Maybe I'll do an updated version.
I like her face. But then... I like Supergirl... a lot.
Really nice take on Kara, I love it
I agree abut the face, there's something that didn't seems right about it compared to your earlier works, but all in all its still an amazing work of art, and an awesome tribute to Mr. Turner.
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Looks like a poster for a Super Girl Returns kinda like Superman Returns..
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...the only thing that I really notice is that her expression seems a little... well.. plastic...
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I messed with the face a lot, and having her gritting her teeth, yelling, or anything else didn't seem to fit. The Superman/Supergirl family don't seem to express much since everything is so easy for them. I wrinkled the brow to show some determination, but possibly not enough.
Nothing is set in stone. Maybe I'll do an updated version.
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No, I agree with Doug. Its always lame when they make Superman feel all this pain. Its my biggest complaint with Justice League (though they seemed to realize that for Unlimited). Of course, that's also what can make Superman on the boring side at times. Catch 22, sorry ^.^
The piece is lovely, though. So many details, and your renders are always so pulled together. Nothing looks like its floating around on top of things.
Great piece, Doug! I like the wrinkles alot - it really adds to the realistic look.
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<qr>What sort of skin textures do you use???
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Damn, I wish I had this kind of talent.
Would make getting images of my toons a lot easier on the wallet
Love the pic, and can't wait to see what you make next
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This is just stunningly awesome to look at. I especially love the angle looking back down at the ground.
The only thing I'm wondering (sorry, my tiny little pilot brain is clicking) is, what exactly is she doing there? Getting prepared to assist the ailing jet? Just arrived on the scene and is sussing out the situation? (Hopefully the crew is busily following their emergency engine fire checklist and talking to ATC.)
On the aesthetic side, though, this is just gorgeous.
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...what exactly is she doing there? Getting prepared to assist the ailing jet? Just arrived on the scene and is sussing out the situation?...
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I figure she's flying to the front of the plane to grab it and assist it back to the ground. I figure she's just arrived on scene and about to take action.
Actually she's there to take your first class drink order... no seriously anything you want, I can get it...
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This is one of my latest pieces for my DC portfolio. Trying for something a little different, and paying an homage to Michael Turner's version of the 'Girl Of Steel';
DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON - Poster of Supergirl
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Ok, here goes my critique...
The first thing I was drawn to was the attention to consistency in the lighting highlights. I like very much how the glow of the fire on the engines makes its mark on Kara's skin and clothes on her right side. I'd point out how her skirt is casting a shadow on the side of her upper right thigh as an excellent example of consistent lighting.
Obviously there's more lighting in the piece than just a source near the engine. And that seems to lead into a problem with Supergirl's face. The shadow between the engine's light source and the sun's light source is causing an awkward frame of her face. You almost can't get any expressiveness out of her mouth pose because the shadow is engulfing it. I suspect this is the main cause of the difficulty people have been commenting in this thread about reading her expression.
In looking very closely at her face, trying to ignore the shadow, I might conclude that you have a good expression going as is. Thus probably all you need to do is play a bit more with repositioning the sun's light source, (and/or with ambient lighting levels), to achieve a better framing that should reveal the whole of the look. In my personal bias I would prefer a twinge more of a smile in her expression, to inject a bit more of a girlish joy into what's a purely workmanlike scrutiny, but that's something I leave totally to the artist to decide.
The second thing that drew my eye was the great hair depiction. It's got a nice balance between lovely and sexy, and enhances the action quite well too. A great fit for the character and the scene. The cape also has that same action-enhancing role but unfortunately seems a bit too crumpled and detracts a bit I think. But the cape is a much less important element to the scene (compared to the hair for example) so any weaknesses in its contributions to the scene are not really a big deal.
The background is great, even though the color palette is a touch unrealistic. One thing that comes to mind that you might consider adding is a heat shimmer effect behind the engine that distorts the background, especially around the contours of the engine.
But yeah, the background is quite good. In fact you might want to consider just blocking off some time and generate a bunch of different kinds of backgrounds, and then selling/sharing those backgrounds to other artists who have a hard time cranking them out themselves.
One other thing I see concerns the way you're implementing the suggestion of speed, with the smears of blue trailing her left forearm and her skirt, and the red smear trailing her boot, and the peach smear trailing her right knee. I might humbly suggest you rethink this trick from scratch, as I don't believe it's working. Yes it gives a bit of a sense of speed and direction, but it has a lot of problems fitting in with the entirety of the piece. Especially where it trails the skirt. The skirt is posed as fluttering freely, where the smear is trying to suggest super streamlined speed which should be completely flattening flutterable fabric. In the end, the smears are suggesting ink bleed of the piece more than suggesting the subject moving with speed.
I don't have an alternative technique to suggest off the top of my head, but I do feel like this color-trail technique common to penciled comic books requires serious rethinking for the 3d realm. Perhaps you should try an investigation into some physics engines, (perhaps something like endorphin), get a simple skeleton with skirt-shaped and cape-shaped fabrics built up, throw it around a bit, and observe how they move frame by frame. Perhaps that analysis might inspire a possible technique. Hard to say.
Oh, and I also liked the lettering on the plane. Nice touch and also very fitting. The individual panel work on the hull texture could possibly have been very time consuming. The windows are about the right size compared to Supergirl too. Nice consistency there.
As always, you do great work. Keep it up.
Wow, Gold... thanks for the great critique.
I agree with many of your suggestions; the idea of heat ripples near the engine is a very good one. If I get back into the piece, I'll definitely play with that one.
I also kinda agree with the blue/red motion streaks. Originally, she was just kinda floating there and didn't look like she was moving at all, so I played with different amount of streaking. Maybe what's needed is some blurring at the base of her feet instead of color lines.
As far as generating backgrounds for others, that's a good idea on paper since backgrounds are so vital to a piece - but generating them for others brings up issues with lighting, angle, subject, etc. There's a lot that needs to go into a good backdrop and I doubt anything I generate could be of use to others.
For the record, I usually spend 3-4 times the amount of effort on teh background as I do the main character. The fire and smoke effects on this piece took me longer to generate than her costume... and that city was a full day's work. And yet the city is only in the piece as a third-tier element.
Maybe it's just me, but the fanservice flip in her skirt makes the "gap" too wide. And her bent leg's got a strange ridge down the middle of it.
Other than that, great piece as usual, Doug! DC would be crazy to pass you up!
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Oh, so lovely, her stomach is all win, and the hair and plane are friggin awesome.
I agree with the skirt and boot streaks comments, except I really like the one under her arm. It looks like shes punching out to stabilize her twist so she can dive under the plane, (umm... kind of like a flip turn in swimming, which makes swim skirts ruffle out like hers is doing), theres more movement there with her torso twisting than if she had just come up from behind superfast, it looks like you caught her 2 seconds after that point.
Which of course makes it a really exciting action scene, I love it!
I like this piece a lot. If I could change one thing (and this is going to be a hell of a one thing), I'd like to see the skin texture worked on. I feel she's got an overly smooth thing going on.
So, yeah, my critique has to do with the largest organ in the human body...
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I like this piece a lot. If I could change one thing (and this is going to be a hell of a one thing), I'd like to see the skin texture worked on. I feel she's got an overly smooth thing going on.
So, yeah, my critique has to do with the largest organ in the human body...
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Thank you...I was trying to figure out exactly *what* about the skin didn't look quite right and you nailed it.
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Absolutely LOVE the hair on all your figures.
LOVE.
My main critique of this is that it's not framed and hanging on my wall.
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My main critique of this is that it's not framed and hanging on my wall.
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If only I were allowed to offer prints of the DC posters. I'm still getting daily hits/comments on Harley Quinn, and she's been up at my DA site for over 2 months. I had over 1,000 hits on her the first 2 days.
But I'm not willing to get on DC's bad side. They're bigger than me.
This is one of my latest pieces for my DC portfolio. Trying for something a little different, and paying an homage to Michael Turner's version of the 'Girl Of Steel';
DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON - Poster of Supergirl