Mike Kost wrote:

 > As an experiment in isosurfaces and media, I came up with the image 
below. I
 > like the idea of some wizard's experiment off in the ether, but I still
 > think it looks too bare. I'm hoping someone will have some 
suggestions for
 > something to add in to help add detail and little touches to the picture.
 >
 > Thanks,
 >
 > Mike
 >
 >
 > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 >
The parts that bug me:

The star has too many predetermined references for me.  Sucks most of 
the potential for mystery out of the picture.  And the media treatment 
does not really evoke the intended mystery.  Not enough sense of 
volumnity I suspect.  The compositional placement of the star symbol 
reductively inside the tentacles which are themselves centered within 
the "circle" of pigmented tiles.  Too static perhaps.

The strong parts are:

The ground plane.  The texture and how the random coloring of the tiles 
   with its the radial falloff sets the scope of focus like a spotlight 
on a stage.  The satisfying scale of the tiles relative to the overall 
image.  The camera angle giving a slightly diagonal sweep of teh tiles 
towards the lower left.**What if, instead of the translucent media 
drawing an symbol on the top of the surface, a mysterious light was just 
visible seeping through from underneath the tiles, an perhaps, ot not, 
coloring a layer of media above the surface.**

The tenticle tower contruct at the center.  The satisfying way the 
tentacles meet at the top, the enigmatic way they intertwine. 
**Suggestion here, you might increase the interest of the composition by 
opposing the verticality of the center piece with a horizontally 
oriented aspect in the image frame.  Have the center item nearly span 
the rectangle, dividing it, and try playing with that tension.  Nice as 
the radial falloff is, we don't need to see so much of it to get the 
point.**

The maybe/maybe not parts are:

The colors.  Green and grey are certainly one of the classicly pleasing 
harmonies. And you are very smart to keep the colors minimal, nearly 
monochrome, just just on saturated color and one monochrome. But it is 
not quite working for me here.  Maybe too warm?, Like a drift towards 
cyan might help? Can you get something out of varying the saturation 
more, maybe keep the media saturated by the solid objexts less so.  Or 
maybe reduce the saturation of the greens in general? Maybe symbolically 
the color is just too predictable? Greenish light equals weird or 
supernatural...is that really the best you can do?   Or maybe confusing? 
Greenish light equals supernatural, green textured tentacles equals 
organic...which do you mean?  It's not wrong, just don't think you are 
getting the most out of it.

My suggetion would be for you to play with some of these design 
elements, some (like cropping or saturation ) even in a graphics editor, 
and further inspiration with the content may follow.  It's an old trick 
when stuck for inspiration.

-Jim

Post a reply to this message