lovely colours and well-composed, but flat and lifeless. far too 2-dimensional, you need to work on shading and modelling rather than visual effect.

If you want to post your work somewhere esky, go to www.deviantart.com

anyways, if youve been playing with it for just a week and are creating stuff like warp, then you're doing pretty good.

Vi

Taw - Thanks, I know what you mean, but until I can find a full-version copy of 3DSMax, I can't start modelling. I don't know, it looks pretty damn complicated to me, but hopefully I can figure it out *crosses fingers*.

Vi - Thank you. I'd consider posting them up but it's mainly a hobby, and I think that I need to get a bit better before I release anything to the general public.

My goal is to one day be able to do stuff like this (my current desktop), I even have some SW models, but I don't know how to use 3DS yet .

Edited by - esquilax on 5/12/2004 2:31:59 AM

nice work esky....only one comment...

your planet and sun appear a little flat and I think its because they each have an almost perfect circular edge...there's an easy photoshop way of getting around this. Select a ring of about 30-50 pixels around the edge of your planet layer and play with gaussian blue settings. If you stagger the blur so it sharpens more towards the centre of the planet you will find it gives it a more "rounded" effect.

Good use of filtering though, nice colours, good work

Good going Esq, those are looking neat. I'd have to agree with the guys though, they are looking a little two dimensional. Along with groms advice you could get that planet looking more rounded with some more detailed shading. Remember that planets are pretty well much black on their dark side, then hue it out. I usually like to do this manually with the burn tool with the exposure set to about 50-70% and you can gradually lighten it up as you get to the point where light outweighs dark. Remember to curve it at the edges, so you'll get the appearene of of a 3 dimensional shape. Try to get your light source right too, otherwise your pick can look very lop sided. Here's one of my dodgy jobs to give you an idea of what I mean.

EDIT: Actually I can see you've used the light source tool in the planet pic and it's seriously not really up to the task. It's great for creating a spotlight like effect, but it sucks for pretty well much everything else i've tried to use it for.

From an artistic point of view the warp one is very asthetically pleasing and I've always been a sucker for cool colours. Personally I think it's by far the best of the bunch.

Edited by - Mustang on 5/12/2004 4:21:16 AM

@ esq looking at your warp one makes me feel motion sick.

I am a addicted to Eve Online! Are you?

@mustang nice piccie mate...I like your use of light and texture on the planet - and your little lens flares make for great atmosphere.

Thanks grom. It was really more of a practice run, I had originally planned to do a 1280X1024 piece but never got around to it.

i love that solar flare one eskie

I am the Master of Disaster!!!!!!!!

ive never got around to make a starfield for this yet. its my second made planet (trust me, you do not want to see the first)

i really like ur warp esq

Grom - Thanks for the advice (and the email ), actually you guys are 100% the planet DOES look 2D. It's odd, because it looked much darker in PS, but I think that the atmosphere must have lightened it far more that I thought.

Mustang - Thanks for the advice, and I agree with you about the lighting effects; they are limited, and can be hard to work with. What sort of lighting did you use for yours, because I like that picture. As Grom said, the texturing is great, and the lighting effect really adds depth.

Dan - That's sort of the idea; it's one step from that to some nice 70's art .

Gowser - Thank you, but I think it needs a little more work; I think I spherised it too many times .

Wolfy - Thanks; I actually made "Warp" yesterday for practice.Your planet is good, except for me, the continents are too strong in terms of colouration; I do not know if they would appear so well through the atmosphereif you know what I mean.

Well you wanted criticism,... Here you have it: first off, I'd say these are Masterpieces of their own, I commend you on this Job well done Esky, second, The Criticism,

The First one, it looks gorgeous, but the shadow is a tad off, it needs a little bit more shadow on the dark side, to portray the nights more exact.

The second one, The water Texture, It's Nice, really. But it looks more like the inner workings of my Brain, too much chaos (IMO ofcourse) if you make it a tad more symmetrical, it would look far betterin my view, it would give you a literal feeling along the lines of "to go with the flow" so to speak.

The third one, The solar Flare, OK. TBH I found the First two better then this one, why I hear you ask?? Simple, I think that its just a star/our sun, with a ring of gas around it, instead of portraying the Feary essence of a solar Flare, If you could make it Have more Flames on the surface, searing across, it would look a bit more "Passionate" and really catch the Spirit of the Fury.

The Fourth, OK Warp, Warp has a "symmetricalness" yet at the same time it hasn't, it is order and Chaos at the same time, and its simply maginificent.

There is your "Critique" I hope it is of your liking, It's the best i could come up with, if you have problems with it let me know, and I think that with your vision on it I can come a bit farther then just my look upon it, Keep up the good work, you mad aussie

Esq:

In respective order:

1) Nice planet, though the lensflares in space kinda make it look cheap imo. other then that, it's a very good pic

2) The water pic looks very Wolfy-ish (remember his pics?) But I like it

3) Solar flare, prolly the one I like best. Just a very good combination of colours. Good job

4) Well... uhm, it's uhm, very..."different"

Nice efforts, all of them. I never got beyond the Render >> Clouds pictures

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Join my Army of Daftness and together we will rule the world of TRL, I mean RTL, I mean... damn, never mind.

Loc - Much obliged; I am always appreciative of honest feedback. I think that you are right about the water texture; my next effort will probably go for more of a "rippling" effect to better imitate the ebb and flow. You like "Warp", eh? Mmm, I think that it definately needs a sequel . Mad Aussie?!?! Actually you've probably nailed me there .

Nick - Thanks for the feedback; the water texture pictures are actully very tricky to do, ironically because of the good old Render->Clouds option you mentioned, because it is supposed to be a random effect, and thus it can be really hard to get the effect you want.