"H.E. Day" wrote:

> Sigh.  Moving along...

Some constructive criticism on a  nice image (lovely details and colours,
everyone has told you that already). All what follow is strictly IMHO of
course, take it with a grain of salt...

- Main complaint would be on the general composition. It's a fortress, OK ? So
it got to be impressive, towering. It is... but a low-angle shot would help a
lot to add some dramatic effect. Right now, it's more a peaceful docking

this type of scene).The low angle shot would allow you to show the darker,
more ominous parts of the fortress and its tiny pretty lights. The lower
structures would be given more space and there would be more contrast. If you
want to crush people with it (including IRTC voters), it has to have weight.

- The fortress. Could do with more tiny stuff like antennas, smaller pods,
docking cranes, irregular structures and the likes (but there's the risk of
overdoing it). Could be more threatening too. What is the purpose of this
fortress, who are its enemies, what sort of weapons does it have, where are
its defenses ?
The blue sails are still too bright, they should be toned down as the red ones
of the blimps. To be frank, the sails are a really nice concept but you
already used them on the blimps, so they're not necessary on the fortress.

- The waterfall : I'm still wondering about it. The realisation itself is
impressive, but I'm not sure about its aesthetic purpose. My problem is that
it is roughly of the same size as the fortress, so you've got 2 elements that
scream "I'm sooo big" in the scene. They compete with each other and something
is lost in the process. If the waterfall was so big that it would dwarf an
already large fortress, it would make more dramatic sense. I don't have a good
solution for this, other than a drastic recomposition of the image (like
making it vertical, or panoramic).

- Blimps : perfect as they are (great textures), but they should have a
clearer relationship with the fortress. Are they defenseless cargo ships or
battle cruisers returning from a raid ? Are they going in or out ? Their
relative size is hard to tell. In fact we're back to the scale problem, as
with the waterfall. You could have one or several already docked blimps on the
fortress itself, and then a larger one floating. The size difference between
the docked blimps and the floating one would give the relative size of the
fortress. With a panoramic view, you could have the larger blimp clearly
coming in, preceded by a flotilla of small tugboats. The sense of scale would
be given by the tugboat/floating blimp, floating blimp/docked blimps, docked
blimps/fortress relationships.

I'd get rid of the exhaust fires, BTW. They're wonderful in space scenes but
here the cyan is too different from the general blue tone.

That's it !!! Already nice for a take 10 (I usually need a take 20 or so
before it's as "finished" as this one is).

G.

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