- Joined
- Nov 28, 2006
- Messages
- 5,360
JudgingOverall, every submission was fairly well done. At first glance they are all very nice, but after a good hard look you start to notice the many flaws and mistakes the artists made during the development of their work.
Also, I'd like to thank Pyritie for doing all of the calculations.
FrIkYCritique: The first thing I noticed, when I brought your texture up in-game, was the cape. The levels of contrast seemed rather strange. The outward parts of the folds seemed to have very sudden highlights and could be mistaken for stripes versus shading. As I kept searching for flaws, I also noticed that along the entire cape the highlights stay at roughly the same amount of brightness. Near the button, where the cape begins to jut outwards, the shading should be brighter. Near the top, where the cape is shadowed by the block of ice, hanging down from his shoulders, the highlights simply stop. They should still be visible, but should be heavily affected by the shadows; the darkest parts should become slightly darker and the highlights should become about the same as what was previously the midtone. Now, back to the bottom of the cape. In-game, any resemblance to ice is lost and it appears to look more like large cobwebs, or something of that sort.
Now, on to the armour. The belt, first off, was decent, but what are those blue splotches of colour you have all around the belt. They look terrible and, whatever they are, they surely shouldn't have that pure black outline around them. Now, let's move our eyes to the right of that. We see the belt buckle - well, I suppose you could call it that. It seems that lightning is being emitted from the blue orb in the center of it. Never attempt to recreate particles through texturing! If you want to do this then go learn to edit models; It's flat, it's still, and it does absolutely no justice to your texture. Fortunately for you, it's not too noticeable in-game.
The braces around his legs seemed rather neat, but it lacked proper tonal contrast. Another place I noticed flaws in the shading was on the pad over his knee. In the little crevices between different parts of the pad you simply made it black, representing the absence of light. Take a look at this image. Notice how the light hits the top of the cover of the gas tank? Your texture needs to incorporate some of these effects.
Lastly, the anatomy seemed rather strange in various places. In some spots, like on the collar bone, the highlights were too strong and in other parts the shading faded as if they were covered in some sort of plastic wrap. There seems to be some muscles or vines - to be honest, I don't really know what it is - on his face and chest that seem very out of place and really need removal. Speaking of the chest, have you ever taken a look at real pectoral muscles? They aren't flat disks found on a person's chest. You need to smoothen out the shading around the edges and make it seem overall more rounded. You also need to smoothen out the hooves. You've drawn them as if they were hair, where every inch is a different shade of whatever colour you're using. Smoothen it out and really strengthen those highlights.
Make sure you test your texture in-game and base your changes on that, not on what you see in GIMP, Photoshop, or the Wc3 Viewer. The ambient glow you've got going on his chest and abdominals isn't as bright in-game and doesn't really even look like a glow - I believe the reason this happened is the same as the one I stated in the previous sentence.
Overall, everything seems rather low resolution and stretched, like you were on some sort of smudge frenzy. Obviously this is an exaggeration, but do not use smudge unless your life depends on it.
Idea & Originality: 21/40
Icy is just about the most basic theme that something can possibly have. That and fiery. And the way you executed that theme is by covering him in ice? I think you could have gotten a bit more creative than that.
Appearance: 43/60
At first glance it looks very nice, and I think that's rather important. Most people wont be looking for every single flaw. But, as I stated earlier, up close, it is very flawed.
Total: 64/100
Votes: 41 of 98.
Total (Including Votes): (64/2) + (41/(98))*50 = 52.9183673A.R.Critique: Woah! What happened here? To me it looks as if you couldn't decide what to do and just took every idea you could think of and put them together. The contrast levels, the mouth in his stomach, and the tongue coming out of the mouth was all a bit much for me. No offence intended when I say it would take a real hard look at the unwrapped texture to really appreciate the excellence of this skin. I don't really like the use of a red-orange and blue together. They're both very opposite and, in this case, they don't complement each other at all. Two places that this is very noticeable are the tongue and the cape. In-game and on the unwrap it stands out way too much, especially considering their lack of importance. I know that saturation and bright colours may be nice for something like Warcraft III, but you really overdid it here. I would have settled for black-gray or a dark red. I feel the same way about the head, chest, and arms.
There's one final problem I noticed. The highlights on the face seem rather strong in comparison to the rest of the body.
Idea & Originality: 32/40
The idea was very interesting, but executed rather poorly in certain spots.
Appearance: 38/60
If you'd chosen different colours and levels of saturation I'd likely have given you a much higher rating.
Total: 70/100
Votes: 19 of 98.
Total (Including Votes): (70/2) + (19/(98))*50 = 44.6938776And so we have...ike_ikeCritique: I was at odds with this skin at first - I still kind of am. But I've grown to like it. The armour is really nice, but, of course, there are a few flaws. First off, the piece of cloth covering his 'you know what' is rather dark, which seems strange, considering the lowest part of it hangs out in front of him. It should be rather bright. Second of all, the head is really crammed. The gaps in between each rune are squished to the point that you can't really see them at all. This makes for a very unbalanced model.
One fairly noticeable thing that I really dislike, and always have, is the skin. The values seem off. Some parts need weaker shadows and others need stronger highlights. Some of it is mostly a matter of the direction said surface is facing. If it's facing up it should be bright, if it's facing down it should be dark - do I really need to explain this to you? You need to take this into account for the armour as well. There's really not a lot of differentiation of the values on the shoulders versus the values on the knee pad, which is facing downwards. Also, a little tip for the future, don't use transparency on Archimonde's cloak. As you may have noticed, there is a huge gaping hole in his upper back.
On a side note, try making those eyes actually glow. They look ridiculous right now.
Overall it was pretty good. I want to see more of this quality stuff around this site.
Idea & Originality: 34/40
Definitely something new, but a lot of the same stuff.
Appearance: 50/60
Like everything else, there were a few flaws, but nothing horribly serious.
Total: 84/100
Votes: 38 of 98.
Total (Including Votes): (84/2) + (38/(98))*50 = 61.3877551
1st Place: ike_ike
2nd Place: FrIkY
3rd Place: A.R.
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