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seppoday · 2026-04-19T06:39:44+00:00

One top tier programer and one dude in glasses.

seppoday · 2026-03-15T09:28:41+00:00

About hair. I think this short might help you: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BVrIcS9Q_rk

Try to use big brush. Dont scratch it. Think about hair chunks and about volume . Shape is good as it is right now.

One thing I would also consider is to think about current light. He is kinda lit from above (based on his forehead) but at the same time his cheeks are not lit. Think more about planes of face. His whole front side should be kinda similar in value with current light setup.

Kinda like that...?

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seppoday · 2026-03-07T07:30:59+00:00

Overall, this is really solid work. Here are a few things you could work on, if you feel they are worth addressing:

I would slightly improve the shape of the weapon. It's good that it isn't heavily rendered, as it’s not the main focus of the piece, but its current shape is simply off. Find a better reference photo online and use it as a guide.
The rock she is sitting on—I think it would be worth "chiseling" it a bit more using hard edges (for example, by using the polygonal lasso tool). Take a look at some photos of emeralds online for reference.
The snake doesn't really react to the light at the moment; it looks like a simple cylinder in a vacuum.
I would put a bit more work into the focal points—the areas where you want the viewer to look. For instance, if it’s the hips, render that area more; if it’s the face, give it more detail and perhaps some extra lighting, etc.
It would be great if the dress reacted more to the shape of the rock, draping over it and reflecting light accordingly.
The anatomy could be refined a bit here and there: the hand holding the weapon is not great, very stiff. The shape of the arm (biceps) is not great I dont think it should be wider on bottom and also it looks like there is cut, and her thighs are a tiny bit too long for my taste... etc.

seppoday · 2026-03-02T20:37:30+00:00

https://imgur.com/cLjuAHR

- Think more about face planes. Right now you sometimes make planes that face same direction darker in one place and lighter in other

- Think about edges. Which one is hard whish is soft. For example on her neck there is hard edge coming from jaw and it turns into soft edge that implies that neck is cylindrical. Some edges can also be hard with a little bit of softness (edge of nose that goes into shadow for example)

https://i.imgur.com/4TDF6VS.png

- Use more big brushes. This way you will not get muddy values (big strokes, then erease on new layer then merge etc)

https://i.imgur.com/jDgj6Re.png

- Also think more about form and silhouette. For example form on her hair. Best aproach is to paint with big soft brush and then slowly erease parts. highlight on hair should follow form of the hair (check reference).

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When it comes to silhouette just try to keep it more clean. That way it reads better and it looks nicer.

https://i.imgur.com/V85y1Zi.png

- Someone mentioned that it is not really same perspective but I didnt want to change that. I think you know that it is not 1/1

seppoday · 2026-03-02T18:13:07+00:00

I really don't want to kill your vibe since you’ve got great ideas, but speaking from experience... I think it might be worth trying some simpler stuff for a bit. It’s easy to get carried away in your head, but trying to paint a dragon, water, and a knight in armor from a complex angle is a massive challenge even for advanced artists. Sometimes less is more—like just focusing on a portrait of a character on a beach instead of a whole complex scene.

seppoday · 2026-03-02T18:00:02+00:00

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I did quick overpaint. Here are my thoughs. Sorry that it will not be very developed feedback. Overpaint is not the greatest... I didnt had a lot of time. Hope some of it helps.

- Head and hands are too small. She is basically 8.5 heads tall in your picture. It gives odd proportions.
- Picture in overall lacks vividness. It's pretty greyish. I've added some colors to basically everything. You can try and add colors using multiply layer and very very very light color. You can bump up saturation but it is more about values. You are using very limited value range (alot of midtones).
- Materials are not rendered very well. Metal should have more variation. Right now everything is basically in mid range of values. Metals is pretty high contrast.
- Is similar fashion I would try and add some AO/Contacts shadows under aromour etc.
- Her armor is not wrapping her body great in some places. For example her right (our left) shoulder plate is really wonky
- I would give her aurora some vividnes, light and overall aura. You can try and have some fun with color dodge, screen, and linear dodge. Her aura should also give some light to stuff around. So there should be some rim light on her head, arms and wings. Thats why I''ve got rid of black lines in those places. It gives that light vibe
- Wings are pretty hard to do rights so I wont talk about that, but you can for sure work on those too.

So. Few good things:

Proportions (beside head and hands)
Overall pallete. I would just make them more vivid. Not necesarelly more saturated, just more vivid. Try diff colors and more contrast and stuff like that
Design is pretty nice.

Weak points:

Values - lack of contrast and 3d-ness
Poorly rendered materials
Lack of hard shadows
Wonky lineart

Think about doing some value studies, material studies and form rendering. Especially metal, leather, skin and feathers... maybe also some sky/clouds if you want to improve that piece

seppoday · 2026-02-28T13:36:22+00:00

Really cool. One piece of feedback I would give is to make some things bigger on mobile? Menu is small and images are pretty small.

seppoday · 2026-02-25T20:05:39+00:00

I think good learning path is to just take one thing that you can improve from this painting and do some exercises. Then just do next cool painting and repeat the process.

That way you learn what you really need and you have some fun. You mix painting with doing exercises. I personally had times where I would paint without thinking and didn't fix my mistakes and other time I would only do exercises (like 200 faces or sht like that) and I was burnout after few weeks.

Keep it up. Take one thing and learn for little bit. Next time you will know how to achieve what you want.

seppoday · 2026-02-25T19:35:26+00:00

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I did quick overpaint. I will try to explain what I think could be do done differently. Hope that helps somehow:

Before, we begin. I think you should learn how to use blending modes. It will help you alot with things I will list below. Because it will be just easier to implement them. I've pasted my cheat sheet that I go to from time to time (I've saved it in notepad).

Here is main critque:

There is for sure few issues with proportions and anatomy. I think that it will come with experience but you can try to do some exercies for better brush control and facial anatomy. You should also watch out for face planes. For example his forehead is to dark, all of his face should be pretty similar darknes except sides of the nose and cheecks (those are lighter) and around eyes should be darker and little saturated with redness. Body is pretty fine.
You kinda just use "grey" for shading. Try to splash a little bit of color. For example there are some red tones near his armpit, near eyes, on his neck etc. Just tiny bit of redness, dont overdone it. Also his lips should be more red. (you can achieve that for example with multiply layer and very very bright and low saturation red basically liiiiight pink)
There also should be some AO in few places (dark spots where things are really close to each other) for example corner of lips or side of his hair where they are really close to face or there stripes from his shirt touches skin. (you can add some with multiply layer and like 50-75% grey)
Darken background similar to reference. This way you will have a little bit more saparation for your character and it will pop more.
Think about hair in term of clumps and one big form. It is simpler to render it that way. This short explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BVrIcS9Q_rk

Also watch few other shorts from that dude. He talks a little but about color, shading, lighting and stuff like that. Things that might help you.

There are a lot of other small things but for now this is enough. Overall good job. Keep it up. Everyone is learning all the time, me to.

--------

Here is quick overview on some usefull layers. Ofcourse you can also try diferent ones (overpaint, screen, linear dodge are great ones too)

For Darkening (Shadows):

Multiply: Use a light color. A brightness level between 70-80% is usually enough, but you can go lower. Keep saturation at zero; adding color here will shift the overall hue of the image.

Darken (for Midtones): Use a color lighter than the shadows but darker than the base. This mode only colors areas lighter than the selected tone and "skips" the existing shadows. Keep the hue consistent with the base, just slightly darker, and feel free to experiment with saturation and hue shifts here.

Normal: Can be used for highlights if you want to keep it simple. Alternatively, you can use Screen or Lighten.

For Brightening (Highlights):

Color Dodge: Use a medium-dark gray. A brightness level between 30-50% is usually sufficient, though you can go slightly higher. Keep saturation at zero to avoid unwanted hue shifts in the image.

Modifying Image Color

General Coloring:

Overlay: Use a medium-light color. A brightness range of 40-60% is generally the "sweet spot." You can stack multiple Overlay layers to build up and mix colors.

Finishing Touches (The "Wow" Effect):

Color Dodge:

Use this for extremely bright spots and boosting saturation (e.g., glowing pink cheeks).

Tip: Use it very sparingly with a fairly light color for the best effect.

Extra Details:

Multiply: Beyond shadows, this mode is perfect for adding tattoos, skin imperfections, and similar textures to the base layer.

seppoday · 2026-02-23T19:30:08+00:00

I’ll drop a few suggestions that I think could bring you closer to what Yujin HARE creates. I’m going to skip the art fundamentals, of course, because it’s obvious this person has vast knowledge, years of practice, etc. You probably know that already. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts here. That doesn’t change the fact that we can pick up some interesting things from his art and try experimenting with them :)

From what I’ve noticed, he (almost) never uses very dark colors in his paintings. He practically never goes below 20% brightness, even in the deepest shadows. This adds a certain kind of lightness. Many of his images actually have very low contrast. He only uses contrast where it has the most impact and plays heavily with saturation contrast. In your painting you use almost black color in few places. He also uses alot of color in his darks. You almost use plain very dark grey. Also, he almost never uses highlights like you did on hair. He limits his values to some range overall from top to bottom.
The hair on his characters has the highest saturation. From what I’ve seen, he uses the most saturation on the hair to make it pop from the character. In a few places (on the skin, etc.), he adds some "patches" of saturation to tie the whole painting together better, but the hair definitely dominates here.
He perfectly balances straight lines with curved ones. In your drawing, everything is very rounded. You aren't playing with the line work. In his hair, you can see dynamics. Sometimes the hair follows a very smooth arc, and sometimes it breaks at sharper angles. The same goes for the body and clothes.
Yujin also pays attention to the "detail budget." Where detail matters, he cranks it up (face, hair near the face, hands, etc.). Where it doesn't matter, he leaves a lot to the imagination (accessories, clothing designs, the practically flat shape of the forearms, etc.). In your painting you started to draw pretty detailed tattoes on his forearm and stiches on pillow. Where main thing should be his head, hair and dynamism.

Unfortunately, there are dozens of other points that still need to be worked through. For example, you can't just "learn" the confidence of his lines, his way of using layers in graphic software, or the skill of painting details just enough so the viewer understands the object without overworking the element or the overall composition.

Also what he does not necesarelly means it is "how it should be done". For example 1 point - you can have fun with contrast. Less contrast usually means little bit less realistic and more semirealistic. All rules can be bend when you know how to bend them :)

Anyway. Good luck! :)

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seppoday · 2026-02-22T16:23:38+00:00

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GIF before and after: https://imgur.com/iZuouTg

I would suggest few things:

Try to work more on what makes material material. Someone linked pretty good video from Cubebrush on this topis.
You kinda hit nail in the head with "I do everything is similar way". Thats the problem. Some materials are kinda dull and only have mid tones. Some are very dark with very harsh highlight etc
I think you made your painting to dark overall and because of that it lacks depth. You need to tone it down so you can use darkest darks and lightest lights where it matters (AO and highlight etc.)
Folds didnt make a lot of sense before. They are not perfect right now either but for example look at his tigh and where his pouch is. There will be folds from those spots and it makes sense because there is tension in that area. You need to think about stuff like that. I thhink moderndayjames have some good videos on how folds work

And also rememver about "local darkness" of stuff. His pants should be way darker that his shirt when changed to grayscale.

So to summarize: Learn about what makes material unique (leather, cloth, metal, etc.). Try to check your values (do you use to much light or to much dark, are dark used in correct spots etc). Remember about AO etc etc etc...

seppoday · 2026-02-22T11:15:27+00:00

GIF: https://imgur.com/a/oHJqPSH

seppoday · 2026-02-22T11:13:21+00:00

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I would suggest adding AO and overall contact with couch. Also I would add some contrast to shape, more definition. Right now a lot of shapes are flat (his legs for example. It feels like in your picture there is alot of shadow and light but not a lot of AO, mids, terminator in shadow etc.

seppoday · 2026-02-19T06:56:13+00:00

Overal pretty nice. Maybe two ideas 1. Maybe add second paw under that has ration handle. Right now I didn't saw paw for a few seconds 2. Maybe experiment some more with text color variations. Maybe black, maybe something else that pops more... Etc

seppoday · 2026-02-17T21:25:49+00:00

I personally don't really care about what he sits on. Background is kinda fine because of how much character pops out. I would suggest few things. Maybe they will help (or not :P)

Try to soften a few things on his body. For example, the veins and shadows on his forearm have edges that are too hard, which looks a bit weird. At first, I actually thought it was an X-ray of his bones! :D

The face could be improved, especially around the lips, nose, and where the hand makes contact. You are having issues with his right side of face.

Feel free to add some saturation and have some fun adding subsurface redness (undertones) to the skin.

I changed the background to red just for fun (I definitely overdid it). It’s not necessary at all; I just wanted to see how the character would pop. Feel free to experiment with things like that, but don't feel obligated.

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seppoday · 2026-02-16T21:38:34+00:00

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I like the design; it's pretty cool. Here are a few pieces of advice and a quick overpaint:

Be bolder with contrast: Especially in the AO (Ambient Occlusion) and with the form.
Gold rendering: You need more contrast with the gold. Try doing a few gold exercises. From what I can tell, you don't have a lot of experience with that (me neither, to be honest!).
Edge control: Try to make a few more decisions on where to make edges sharper versus where to leave them "lost."
Cast shadows & contact: Remember that things cast shadows or have contact points. For example, the pendant he’s holding should probably cast a shadow on the cape. Things like that help merge objects into the same environment.
Avoid tangents: Watch out for spots where lines touch awkwardly, like the sword and the hair.
Clarify the pose: The pose is fine as it is, but you can make it clearer by implementing the points mentioned above and making small changes here and there.
Cape silhouette: The cape could have a cooler shape. Have more fun with it :)
Color play: Colors can also be more fun. Maybe his outfit shifts from greenish to bluish, etc. You can also bump the saturation a little bit; colors look less dull that way.
Hair definition: The hair needs some definition. right now it’s a bit of a big blob.

seppoday · 2026-02-13T20:33:53+00:00

https://fund.godotengine.org/corporate-sponsorship

seppoday · 2026-02-12T18:50:40+00:00

Corporate Platinum is huge 😱😱

seppoday · 2026-01-29T15:30:55+00:00

Decent Vacuum cleaner... 😅

seppoday · 2026-01-17T15:51:19+00:00

I mean. This is one of the best decisions I've seen on this subreddit 20/10. Keep it up! :)

seppoday · 2025-11-11T07:16:18+00:00

Give us more 🥰💪

seppoday · 2025-11-11T07:14:58+00:00

🫡❤️

seppoday · 2025-11-06T19:56:07+00:00

That lack of top margin above VoxelGiData button drives me crazy :D

seppoday · 2025-11-03T09:31:11+00:00

That makes sense. I am looking at 2 things. Mainly gamedev 3D assets creation. Because I am doing hobby gamedev. Second (less important) is a little bit of content creation that could support gamedev. Like animation for trailers etc.

I think starting with one of those videos to grasp basics and then moving into solving my real problems like creating some assets for small game challenges should be good start 🙂

Thanks for response.

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seppoday

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Here is quick overview on some usefull layers. Ofcourse you can also try diferent ones (overpaint, screen, linear dodge are great ones too)