The VG Resource

This needs to be finished, because this doesn't show the true skill of you two yet. Thus I am not impressed.

The boy's upper body is too large compared to his legs, nothing is exactly in proper proportion. The left-side arm is kind of weird, I think it can be shaped a litter better than that, especially if he's wearing a sweater the lower part of his arm shouldn't be that skinny, it looks like he has a large shoulder. His whole lower section is just too small, either that or you guys will need to heavily size down the upper body.

Now whatever shadow he's casting isn't exactly right either, neither is the lightsource. You have him almost in front of the rocks with his left side blocking its direction from where the light is glowing, but the light is still reflecting off the rocks??? The rocks should only have a tiny fragment of light on it, since they're behind the boy.

Now I know everything else is still in WIP, but the scenery should have some leaves flying around/falling since it's autumn in the piece. Because honestly if there's just gonna be leaves/trees done without anything else it might come out kind of boring. Right now only the lighting is what's adding depth to the image, so there should be other things going on in there to add more the atmosphere, those bird's won't add enough by themselves. Lastly I think the house can stick out a bit better, it doesn't really look mysterious or give off any vibe, it's just a simple house (that looks really cartoony) with the lights on from far away to me.

Aside those points this is setting up to look really great so far, and I can tell you two are putting a lot into this, and i swear if this isn't finished I will make my way to make sure both of you are dead. Just please look over those points I mentioned because there's a chance it can really hinder a lot in the piece.

thank you so much jar, we really appreciate it! i just got back from washington d.c. so i won't have an update for the next few days but we'll be certain to work on those points. awesome awesome awesome crits

so awesome i thanked it 5 times.

Thank you everyone for the criticism and compliments. We're still working it out trying to implement what was said, but we might as well give you guys this. Progress has been slow, but It'll get done. =)

Silly Daniel, you shouldn't be in forests, you should be running from monsters in castles.

Wonderful job, BTW.

I'm thinking that you need to make the house in the background more of a focal point; it's very dark and the area around it is very dark, so the eye's never really drawn there. Ideally, you want the eye to be drawn to the kid in the foreground, and from there to the house -- otherwise it loses the narrative.

I'd suggest lightening up the winding path that goes to the house a bit, and maybe throwing some clouds or the moon or something light behind the house so that the eye's drawn towards it.

I'd also suggest knocking back the second layer of trees a bit - they look as well lit as the one in the foreground, which gives them equal importance and makes it seem a bit "noisy". You don't even have to do a whole lot - just use more of that middle brown colour on them rather than the greeny grey you're currently using to pick out details. You know how in old cartoons, usually when you saw a brick wall there'd only be little clusters of bricks drawn in, and the rest of the wall would maybe be a flat colour? That's to reduce noise. If you use detail selectively, then people will kinda "fill in" the parts where you haven't used as much detail; so you can simplify the second lot of trees and make them a bit darker, and it'll still read as being the same kind of tree in the foreground, without them seeming as much of a focal point. You already seem to have done this with the tree on the left, actually!