I wanted something that felt fantastical and fit with a DND/Pathfinder setting, and so I leaned into the compositor for making the image look more in that style.
I have two different compositions here. I made the second one first, but felt like the light house was way too massive in scale, also the airship was covering it. In the first image, I went with a slightly different comp (thirds as opposed to centering) and I tweaked the clouds a bit to allow for more light.
Which one feels better? Is the painterly compositor style coming across? Is it just too undefined and noisy? Does the image evoke a feeling of adventure?
The version with the separate ship and lighthouse works better for me. The painterly style works for me (also on ship an lighthouse). I like the white passepartout - but I don´t like the dark clouds. To similar color like the hull. To dark and narrowing the scene. Made a quick sketch:
The compositing does look better, I would look into smoothing the balloon so that it looks less faceted, possibly bulging outside of the ropes somewhat:
That was a quick update I would still slightly recolor the wings for more color contrast to the clouds. And also make the dark clouds in the background brighter (orange?), so that the hull is the darkest structure in the image to draw attention to it. Maybe there is a way to make the lighthouse more visible (glow, light streaks?)
I think it’s getting in the right direction, I’m not super found of too much painterly stuff, unless you really push the painting emulation. Basically I find the paper texture a bit too much, but it’s also possible to imitate more watercolor so it ends up working better. Anyway it’s not the most important but maybe something you can revisit later …
I think there is too much similarities in size between the ballon and the ship, so we loose a bit the scale, could be worth trying to make the ballon way bigger, even if it goes out the the frame, or the ship smaller…
Also it might be worth playing a bit more with perspective, since if the feeling is about going for an adventure, it might be cool to see the distance, and hints that we’re leaving some known place… Could be cool to confront that ship with more space either in the perspective, but could also work by making it smaller…
The lighthouse is cool, but it must be very high if it’s above the cloud, it conflicts a bit with the size of the ship, so maybe try to have it smaller on top of a rock/mountain or something…
A common trick is to use some birds to give depth and sense of scale, you can have some near the camera and near the elements so it’s easier to apreciate the distance and how big objects are …
I’m not saying you should do everything, but it might be worth playing with some of those ideas you like…
Hey ! This is much better ! I didn’t replied last time because I’m not a lot in front of my computer right now and it’s hard for me to make mockups to illustrate what I’m saying.
Anyway, it’s a much more interesting direction, the subject is more action oriented, dragons are cooler than lighthouse obviously and the framing is much more dynamic.
At this stage I would take that image in a image editor and do some tests : things can always be pushed a bit, so it could be worth to play with scale of things, move stuff around a bit. Basically you are in a good place for all the elements, but sometimes making suff bigger or smaller, a bit higher or lower in the frame stuff like that can improve things even more.
Some tricks can also help to give depth and help the viewer to understand how close or far the dragon is to the ship, and therefore understanding it’s scale…
Anyway, the image works well, but it’s always possible to improve stuff. Which is already great compared to fixing stuff in order to make it work. Now it’s up to you if you want to try to keep working on it, or if you prefer to move on to something new !
For me I think the opposite, I think a different style on the flaps and making them bigger would look really cool (I’m imagining them as some sort of stabilizers to make sure the ship doesn’t wobble) though I would probably have put them higher up on the balloon since that area (top right) is fairly empty
I would still slightly recolor the wings for more color contrast to the clouds. And also make the dark clouds in the background brighter (orange?), so that the hull is the darkest structure in the image to draw attention to it. Maybe there is a way to make the lighthouse more visible (glow, light streaks?)
