Scooby-Doo paintover challange

Ok, so I finally made some time to critique your Scooby & Shaggy paint over. Let me preface my comments by stating that I am not an expert on the subject, digital painting that is. However, I have dedicated many hours to other artistic disciplines. So take this critique with a grain of salt.

To begin with, the thing that stands out the most (in my opinion) is the areas of high contrast, especially on Scooby. In fact, if you squint your eyes you will see what I am talking about. There are very dark areas that pretty much follow all of the figure's contours without taking into consideration the direction of a light source. Light and shadows don't really behave this way. They are highly dependent on the direction of a primary, or even a secondary or tertiary light source, as well as reflections.

For example: If light were to come in from the left hand side, Shaggy’s t-shirt would be relatively dark because it is being covered by Scooby’s body.

Secondly, because of the stark contrast, the technique itself comes across as being too heavy-handed and therefore rather artificial (again, in my opinion). In other words, it appears as if you have pressed down way too much with your brush(es) while painting. Also, the shadowed areas seem to be blurred, which may or may not have been intentional. Nevertheless, it also comes across as artificial. The human eye perceives things as being blurry due to depth of field, as opposed to light and shadow.

My recommendations: 1) Do practice sketches and study how light affects and wraps around 3-dimensional objects. 2) Study the work of Fiona Staples. She is the artist on a comic book called Saga published by Image comics and her work is miles ahead of most other artists in the field that use digital techniques.

Well, that is about it. Don’t take it personal, just take it as constructive criticism in order to help you improve. Keep up the good work!