I unfortunately don’t have time to continue working on this, but I would love critique on what I could have done better, and what to keep in mind in my future projects! Thanks ahead of time!
Also, forgive the JPEG compression, I had trouble getting the picture into this post… https://www.dropbox.com/s/uxspjfj6anmj0un/TayloXmas2015_2.jpg?dl=0 is better.
It is kinda boring and ugly. The sky and the sea both looked empty and featureless. The sea specially doesn’t work. It is nothing more than a graduation of color. Nothing much in there to see. The little fishes there just looked lost. The sky is also another graduation with unrecognizable blobs of light and that strange mist like thing in the middle. The surface of the sea is also as featureless. Really, what is there to look at.
The low poly boulder? is just weird. How was it floating?
The biggest fail here is the juxtaposition of the fine graduation of the sea and sky and the flat angular low poly boulder and sea surface. The two just don’t mix. The addition of that misty thing especially crashes with the nature of the low poly boulder and sea.
The whole thing just doesn’t work.
What would you suggest I do differently when planning out my next project? I was going for a fairly simple look, as it was intended as a phone background. What would be a good way to make sure that it isn’t boring?
I definitely could have gone stronger with the colors. Thanks for the tip!
bigbad got a great idea and bigbad’s adjustment make it look much better. Still, there is still the issue that there nothing there to look at. The boulder(?) maybe, but it is really weak as a focal point as there is nothing really interesting about it. My suggestion would be to replace with a buoy. A buoy has a stonger form, is easily recognizable and has more clear details that a viewer could look upon.
It’s meant to be an iceberg, but I can see how that isn’t clear. I’m not sure how I would add visual interest to it without making it busy? The goal was to make a more minimal design, which of course does not mean uninteresting which I have apparently done.
Minimalism is about striping things down to what is important and to just present the heart of the matter. May it be color, shape, texture, form, material, etc.
Now back to your image. What quality that is in the image did you want to present to us? What is the heart of the matter? Is it the iceberg itself? Is it the low polygon technique? Is it the sea and sky? Or is it light? Is it color?
I think I can see how you failed to be minimalistic. It is because you aren’t actually striping things down, but you are complicating things. From what I could see, you are trying the low poly modeling technique as can be seen by the sea and the iceberg. But instead of staying true to that, you add other stuff. For example, your treatment of the sea and sky is realistic which is contrary to what low poly modeling technique is about. Another is your use of dof and atmospheric effect which again is contrary to what low poly is about.
Instead of staying true to the nature of low poly modeling, you add a lot of fancy things that make it lost its effectiveness.
I disagree with a lot of things that have been said.
To me its clear that this is an iceberg. The REAL main problem on your image is its shape.
Look at how awesome icebergs can look :



And there’s much more to see on Google images.
Yours is a random shape not very interesting to look at.
As you can see on the image above, you can have some flat parts, but not just triangles, instead more complex ngons. Also the fact that there are big flat parts over here and more detailed parts over there and very detailed parts over there makes it more fractal, and fractal is nature and beautiful.
Another problem is your ice material. There should be SSS, that’s also what makes the ice look beautiful.
Between all the iceberg images I saw on the internet, those where the camera is halfway above and below the water surface are mostly not real photos and look very fake. And it looks like you took inspiration from them.
Here is the real thing :

Very foggy, blurred with a very saturated blue and most of the time very dark. And yours is almost at night !
In your case I don’t think we would see the underwater part. But if the camera was above we could see a nice reflection like on the first picture I showed you.
Another thing : don’t blur the milky way, it will look way better sharp.
And how about an aurora borealis ?
Look at the both combined, holy shit !
Finally, I would make the water more calm (even more if you go for minimalism) and MAYBE some more blue in your sky.
Well, it’s sad you can’t improve it. I think it could be improved a lot and become really awesome !
@Caetano
Icebergs come in different size and shapes. Of course since your sources are photos, the photographer would choose an iceberg with interesting shapes. Many icebergs are actually uninteresting. You are a victim of cherry picking.
Also, again as I said, the style DarkCrescent uses is low poly style… and that is quite obvious. With low poly, realism is not what it’s after. It is a rather specif type of stylization. Clearly you are not familiar with this style… or even know about it, based on your comment.
Your suggestions though nudge DarkCrescent to use realism which I think is one way this one could go, but DarkCrescent clearly wants to go to the low poly route as evidenced with his effort in modeling the iceberg and the sea.
Well, I said icebergs “can” look awesome. Yes, photographers pick the best, but that doesn’t mean CG artists should pick the boring ones.
I don’t see how putting ngons instead of triangles would remove the low poly style, as well as adding SSS, making the water more calm, and the other things I said (okay the fractal part would). I used real photographs to back up my arguments but taking inspiration from photographs doesn’t mean going for photorealism.
I hope I didn’t seem offensive by saying I disagree with many mentioned points because artistic choices are very subjective. (However saying I have no knowledge of minimalism seems a bit judgemental and we’re on Blender Artists and should discuss like artists)
I think I see, a better iceberg shape would definitely have helped. I’m thinking I should have also used more reference photos… There is a bit of SSS, but I was scared to crank it up because of render times… I don’t have access to my desktop right now, and I need my laptop in classes.
I originally had the galaxy in the background sharp, but it ended up being distracting because the texture is a real picture, and it looked out of place in the lowpoly world. With more time I probably could have worked out a better texture to use.
It is a shame, but I just don’t have the time to devote to CGI right now, as a full time student and a part time worker… but thank you to everyone commenting, this is very useful to me.
Don’t worry. I’ve been doing CGI for 15 years and worked and studied other stuff.
Very few get a full-time job in this business.
Yeah, it’s a fun hobby
@ Caetano
I’m not saying that you have no knowledge of minimalism, just that you don’t recognize the low poly style. And ngons… you show your ignorance again. Low poly uses triangles.
As for the iceberg’s shape, it is not truly the problem. Even your example iceberg’s would become plain blobs using low poly style. Low poly is just not for detailed work. The real problem here is DarkCrescent being too fancy. Textured sky, dramatic lighting, atmospheric effects and others. Low poly works by being plain and simple.
Well, for me, this would have worked better if you just used plain white diffuse material for the iceberg, a solid light blue on the sky and a dark blue for the sea and a sea related color for the water surface. A cartoony treatment works better for low poly styles. Things like SSS, tranlucence, gloss, strong textures and the like often just fail when used with this style. And since everything would be rather plain and simple, that means quick render time.
And I understand your lack of time to devote, same here, but it was fun no?
Any way we could get the blend? i normal don’t ask for them but in this case since i know you are not working on it anymore it would be interesting to take what you have already and see how much it can be improved on. bigbad’s edit looks great. im just curious.
anyways. something else that is making the whole low-poly/high poly line seem odd is your distance objects. there are larger icebergs/mountains in the background that looks pretty smooth and realistic. compared to your iceberg.
i don’t mind the shape of your iceberg. but agree the material could be better and the underwater part could have more contrast. you have to really look to find interesting things in the image.(the shark/whale thingy swimming under the iceberg especially)
also… i think i know what Caetano was talking about. here is a low poly iceberg image that looks great.
This is my last post on this thread.
ngons :
quads :
cool shape + ngons :
SSS/volume scattering :
translucence + refraction :
tanslucence (water) & SSS (on the rock) :
gloss/reflections :
Refraction (you didn’t mention it but anyway) :
textures :
stars background (on top of planet ??)
You can totally say you don’t like it but I can’t let you say “Triangles + diffuse only + simple lighting” is the only rule to follow for this style because there is no such thing in art.
Great points.
Elitists behavior is annoying. Art is what ever it is but you don’t have to like it but don’t make rules.
I tend to agree that complex shaders can work in low poly (as well as ngons), and in certain cases textures can work. The point of the style IMO is to build the simplest representations of shapes, and stylize them.
Ok. Hmmm.
Ngons: Read further
Quads: Look carefuly. They are not.
cool shape + ngons: Are you sure they are ngons?
Though admitedly, I am wrong about this. Ngons could work with this style if used properly and so are quads. It just that, low poly style is enamored with facets. Triangles are easier to work with and often works much better. Triangles are also more interesting to look at than quads. Like in your quad example, the artist subtly break the quads. It is quad-ish but they aren’t quads. The artist just have to use triangles though subtly. Triangles just works better in most cases. If you lack experience, use triangles.
And I quote myself:
Things like SSS, tranlucence, gloss, strong textures and the like often just fail when used with this style.
Often fail doesn’t mean always fail. Used carefully, they work. Used carelessly they fail. And in DarkCrescent’s case, they fail. Especially because DarkCrescent is using too many of them at once.
You can totally say you don’t like it but I can’t let you say “Triangles + diffuse only + simple lighting” is the only rule to follow for this style because there is no such thing in art.
You are pulling words out of my mouth. I did not say that. Read my comment carefuly. Here, I qoute what I said here:
Well, for me, this would have worked better if you just used plain white diffuse material for the iceberg, a solid light blue on the sky and a dark blue for the sea and a sea related color for the water surface. A cartoony treatment works better for low poly styles. Things like SSS, tranlucence, gloss, strong textures and the like often just fail when used with this style. And since everything would be rather plain and simple, that means quick render time.
See? The gist is: a cartoony treatment works better. Look at your examples. Aren’t they cartoony?
I give those specific choices to DarkCrescent, so to get an instant cartoon look since it seems that DarkCrescent doesn’t have much skill to make proper use of more complicated setups and DarkCrescent has little time to spare to even experiment and execute them. So I give the easiest and quickest route that would improve the image as per necessity.
@bigbad
Elitists behavior is annoying.
I try to perform to your wishes the best I can.
Art is what ever it is but you don’t have to like it but don’t make rules.
This is even more nonsense. I don’t have to like it but don’t make rules? The meaning and intention just really escapes me.