Hi!
I need some feedback, suggestions for improvement and maybe some positive things about my current project
Thanks in advance
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Looks great overall.
Your candle material doesn’t look much like wax. You need to add subsurface transparency to the shader.
The candlelight is quite strong- I would turn it down by a lot to A. be more realistic and B. create more interesting contrast:
There is a sharp line on her forehead- not sure what it is, but it is very distracting:
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The overall pose and composition is good, but it feels like there is an extra spot light from the front which we cannot see, which is disorienting.
The candle looks more like bone than wax as pointed out by joseph, and I feel like the skin may have a similar lack of subsurface scattering.
The hair looks stiff in some parts; the curls seem to follow straight lines when they should follow a curved trajectory which sprawls from the scalp. I suggest exerting more control on the individual strands.
A more subtle issue is with the folds on the blouse. They lack creasing towards the elbow and seem to be magically puffy in places where they wouldn’t usually be with the pose being as it is. A brief study on this can help you make big improvements with small changes.
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I think the grip on her hand looks strange. There’s too much space between the fingers. In the side view it looks like she has a firm grip, but in the front view it looks very loose. The guy in joseph’s reference photo also holds the candle quite loosely, but it is much shorter and he holds it with both hands.
You wouldn’t hold a candle as thick and long as she has with just one hand at the bottom. If you use just one hand, then it’s a firm grip in the middle, like you grab a pole. There is very little space between the fingers:
Or hold the candle at the bottom but with the other hand as a support. If the little finger is used as a support, the grip can become looser and there is more space between the fingers, especially between the index and middle fingers:
This also happens if the angle between the hand and the candle is very large, i.e. the candle is held high or at an angle:
(It’s also a thin candle here.) But in your case, she holds a large candle right in front of her with a 90° angle between her hand and the candle.
Positives: All in all, I like it 
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Hi,
thank you all for your feedback! Fixed following points you mentioned in the previous posts:
- Got rid of the sharp line. No idea how it got here. I created the skin texture in Substance Painter - maybe a problem during the baking process
- Added some subsurface transparency to my candle
- Added some more subdivisons and increased the frequency in the ‘curl hair curves’ node
ToDo List: Working on the nightdress and the ‘strange’ grip
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