Icarus

Critiquing as part of Weekly Commenting at ProjectComment

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Wow, this is really fantastic. The colors and detail work make an immediate impact on the viewer.  It really reaches out and grabs you!

Excellent work on your color palette.  You've got this great triad going of red, golden yellow, and greenish hues.  The dominant gold really goes with your theme of Icarus and the sun.  The red, dark and bloody, adds a hint of the morbid.  The greenish tint on the wings, and even a bit in the coat, gives a sense of otherworldliness, or maybe even decay.

The wings are very well done as far as the design and detailing.  The transparent panels are a bit inconsistent though.  You've made them semi transparent by showing the background through them, but the viewer can't see anything else through them.  The other panels where they would overlap, and where the shoulder struts and geared headpiece would be behind the panels, they just disappear.  Same with the ribbons and other pieces of his clothing.  If you're going to make things see through, you have to think about everything that would flow behind them, even if you didn't include it in your original sketch. ^_^;

The clothes are very rich and fascinating just by themselves.  The way you've done the different types of stitching and brocading is wonderful and really adds decadence and wealth to the already golden scene.  You've done a good job with painting the textures, but you do need to take more care on the general form shading, especially around edges.  You did this well on the shoulder struts and hat, but less so on the metal frame of the wing panels and the entire body form.

I like the angular way you've done his fingers; it gives him a bit of a twisted feel, almost like a mad scientist.  The body proportions are generally good, although the head feels a bit small in relation to the hands and broad coat.  The face is sort of indistinct, but I think that suits the feel of the piece, where he is sort of subsumed by the technology and fashion around him.  I will say that the nose proportion is a tiny bit off.  It should be a little shorter, with more space between the top lip and the bottom of the nose.

The piece really comes together well, especially with the added gear images in front.  If you had cropped the sides in a bit closer, sacrificing some of the edges of the coat frill, it might have made him more imposing by filling up more of the available space, almost overcoming the size of the picture.  I like the way everything flares out from the center, almost expanding outward and becoming larger than life.  There's an unreal quality here.  Based upon your description, I really think you captured that feeling of perhaps having gone a bit too far in technological development, maybe the man having overreached.

Great work in taking and developing an idea into something with a life of its own.  You deserved your contest win with this one!