Thank you, mircea. It's been a while since I illustrate something as detailed as this. It's quite interesting for me to print this illustration in a large format (let's say 60 cm square) later & hang it up to the wall. Although it will definitely reveal the secrets & illusions from this illustration. It is not insanely detailed in the larger pixels format for sure. Lol.

This is definitely my favorite illustration so far!! great job author

I envy your patience and effort on this work, and it should get very high score. Details, brush patterns, composition, and colors are awesome. Maybe there are many artworks out there with greater amount of details but considering this is the new entry for a weekly contest, not much people can do the same as you did. However, still there is a 'however' (please forgive me if I'm too strict on giving that critique), each layer of character is quite flat to me, you can work more on shadows and highlight to give more depth to your work, to reach the perfection. Still, elite work!

wonderful piece of art! Raw illustration as its best. However agree with langstrum, the only weakness is the flatten look of the image, it just makes it look more cartoonish, but that's just our opinion that we think a lil' depth would make it even better, maybe this is just the way you intended...

BTW signature is not that hidden... i seriously suggest to remove it for contest purposes, since precisely viewing the details is an important matter to vote...

Thanks for the comments & critiques, esp for langstrum.

Hey, man. Where did you point about the quite flat figure? Is the characters (fairies) or the guardians? There are already so many works on shadows & highlights upon every characters in this work, man. Might be not perfect, but consider this is done because of another jobs coming to me & however... I'll make another depth if I had such a time.

Ofc, I'll boost up my painting speed to another contest for sure. Once again, thanks for reviewing my work so far, everyone. Good luck on your entries too to the contestants.

@ Mike. Uh-Oh! I'll do it right now... completely 'hidden' after this update. Thanks for reviewing that~!

EDIT: NO SIGNATURE visible freely now.

Okay, since you asked I'll give a scale to judge whether you need more depth or not. Focusing on the faces of the fairies, they're very close to the light source, right? comparing the highlight on their face and the midtones, they're dramatically different, so your light source is strong in the center but becomes weaker considerably as the distance increases. Therefore, the shadow and highlight on the dragon and the tree should be more dramatic also. The green and yellow fairies seem to be on the same plane and the two fighters are on top of them., etc.

I understand your situation, that's totally similar to me. You don't need to do that for the contest because you can win it easily and get high score. My critique is for the case if you want to improve and even commercialize your work. Thank you for your effort, if you didn't do that, we can't have this kind of work in Pxleyes ^^

very good work, i like it a lot ,only one small thing,you left the line in the upper left corner of the horns, GL

Great suggestion, langstrum. I'll take that POV from you. Bear with me since I've been working this whole key lighting illustration just a week lately (inspired by Dimitri a.k.a Karaflazz from pxleyes photography contest). No serious lighting matters at the hand like this for the illustrations I've made around concept arts just with the two lights, but you've made my eyes quite open for the depth of colors.

I'm sure you know about manga, the origins of them; they're not bother with the lightings & depth of colors too much. They're seem so flat for instance. But FYI, I try to leave that manga area & follow the realistic approach like my friend, Stanley Lau from IFS. It's kinda like your art, langstrum. A hybrid of manga & realistic called manga realist.

Thanks for your opinions on my work, friend.

@ vexycon: whoa... you notice that?

EDIT: Re-submit the entry.

Just want to say that your entry is one of the best DD I have seen this week. I think you have the talent and the creativity to do works and illustrations like this particular. I have seen your work and I am happy that you posted it here. I think by using Photoshop CS5, Wacom Intuos 4 and Cintiq, gives you the advantage of create a good Illustration, but remember that there are members who do not have all the fancy stuff you use for your work, and are limited to use just a Photoshop program, not even a CS 3! You are a professional, and yes, we like to see work like this. Hope to see some of your tutorials, if you post one. Good luck!

I do not know what is with me and these lines, but there is another on wolf ear sorry but this picture has to be perfect ,I really like your work, I wish you all the best

oh....you're rocking pxleyes.com....! just another super elite work....!:bow2b)

George, your comments most impressed me & also flattered me as well. I'm not that professionally & fancy guy with the kind of fancy stuffs, it's thanks to God for His blessings, talents that He gave to me & I just 'borrow' all my belongings in this world. About CS5, it's from my company, I didn't buy it by myself. Cintiq & Intos4 bought by myself (helped from my parents) years ago to help me speed up my commercial projects. I'm still young & need to improve myself after all.

Since I found Pxleyes accidentally month ago, I would like to share my techniques of illustrations & concept arts here after. Yet a master, but still enough for everyone to pick one or two techniques. Hope I'll finish & establish my first tutorial in no time. Thanks for cheering me up, George.

@Vexycon: MAN... your eyes so pixelated~! Really awesome details captured, thanks, I've already removed the gutter black shadows on my textured brushes.

@dekwid: thanks, man. Not an elite work, just try to share my works around here... since, I don't really dig the manipulation things with people & objects... EXCEPT matte-paintings for environments.

Beautiful composition, but I agree, the characters appear somewhat flat. The center appears to be taking place in a room with the background consisting of painted large creatures watching. This is particularly because of the shadow behind the green figure.

The creature in the lower RH corner (werewolf?) looks out of place, and almost an afterthought, with the glowing edge of the figure in front of his mouth aligning too much with the profile of his face. The glow itself is out of place and inconsistent with the image lighting.

This is a very entertaining image, none the less.

Thank you, MossyB. Your comment always had an interesting POV. "Painting large creatures watching because of the shadow" I notice that after reading your comment & really... really... really looking at my own image. Wow. Point taken.

Yes, it is a dumb werewolf (lol). About the inconsistent glows & shadows, please forgive & bare with me. I've tried to make it as fast as possible without the worry about the precise or perfect outcome, I tried not to render the glow to much at an early stage, but with the adjustments layers turned on; the glow (because of Vibrance FX) burst out leave some of the mid tones desaturated. Maybe I'll correct this later after take some rest, however thanks to your DEEP comments (as always).

Author: Thanks for your feedback on my comment above. By calling you a "professional" I ment to tell you that you have made the effort to follow the suggestions for corrections, or adjustments to your work. You will see that some entries, do not even make corrections, or follow an advise to bette their work. This is a place to learn, it is true, that by looking at work like yours, will open a huge avenue for those who want to learn. Details are important in an entry, shadows, light, perspective, appareance, color harmony....etc, you have shown us that with patience and taking the time to correct your entries, we can learn from you, as well as from other exceptional Artists here in Pxleyes.

You have to have a commitment to create something nice and appealing to others, as I told you, you have the talent and the artistic creativity in your hands and mind. Forget about what I said about you having an advantage over others, by using fancy stuff, to create Art. It is you, who creates this, and your talent is endless. Thanks again for allowing us to be witnessing something beautiful....... !

Dear George; I really thanks to your kind words, I'd love to see the others points of views & try to understand their criticism about my art & I'd love constructive criticism here at Pxleyes as well. It's just a problem with the time spend if I had no change anything at all, but I'll try to fix or correct my entry if there's a break time to me (taking my lunch break or even while I'm relaxing at the office minutes before going home. Lol.)

George, you do have the talents & everyone got their artistic talents as well, it is my job & also commitment to illustrate something that basically from imaginations of a child (back day, while I'm working on the Studio Ghibli), but nowadays, I move to game art departments to produce concept arts; it's always a world of children if I may say so.

I'll be here for sharing my illustrations, passions & emotions. Sometimes, if I might not be here, it's simply because I have my own life to fight for; "my life for the horde..."

WOW I am amazed! Wonderful work author!

Thank you, lordymail. I'm glad that you like it.

exceptional

Welcome to Pxleyes. Glad you found us!!!! What a future you have!! This is a fantastic entry!! GL

Really, thank you very much for everyone's support on this entry. Though it's still lacks of perfection of shadows, values & depth renderings. I hope, I'll improve my illustration works more realistically next time.

By meantime, I'm very sorry, I couldn't change the depth values of it, MossyB, Mike & Langstrum. But I did a minor changes of darkened, highlighted & removed some unwanted lines thanks to Vexycon with so little time for me back then.

I hope this so called illustration fit the orange theme. Good luck & best wishes to everyone~!

This is so beautiful! A real fantasy! My instant favorite!

Orange... Fantassy and lot of fantassy.... lol... you did the fantastic work, Congrats in advance...... (INSTANT FAV) keep entering....

Great

Magnificent! An instant fav here!

I only found Pxleyes a few says ago and use Photoshop mainly for photo editing,but drawings like yours give me a boost to spend more time on digital art.I have to learn a lot of course,but picking up bits and pieces from the 'masters' along the road will certainly help me in the right direction.
The Duel Of Oranges comes close to perfection in my humble opinion,it's stunning !

Author, you have incredible talent! This is fantastic work.

Hello everyone... I'm honored that you like my entry. Though it is more like a plain digital painting rather then the skilled photo-manipulation. To be honest, I just want to share my free-time stuffs like this, not trying to compete nor show off. I really couldn't make an adjustments to some of the suggestions. But still, I would like to thank you very much indeed to those who support me, vote me & offer an opinions to me.

@Duhby63; I believe there are NO masters out there or even here in Pxleyes. We're a couple, a community of learning people together. So as for me, I'm still want to learn, adapt, share & could even get something insight from everyone. I am trying to survive.

So, I would like to give my supports to everyone here in Pxleyes; my best damn entries. Sharing is caring, isn't it?

FANTASTIC!!

AMAZING! You make me want to run out and buy a pen-pad....even though I can't draw quite as exceptionally as you!

I seen this coming! CONGRATS!

a well placed 1st.. congrats...

Congratulations...brilliant work

Congrats ... there was little doubt about it!

Congratulation to everyone as well. Though it's quite not perfect with the renderings of my painting because of the tight schedules, still... I LEARN SO MUCH from you, guys. This community is great. Meantime, I'll share my tutorials. It's not how to do this, but how to speed up your creations with custom brushes & such. So there will be no doubt about how could I achieve this complex illustrations in a single week with another illustrations of mine.

Hope this will answer or even prove some of you which try to ask about it.

Thanks in advance, have a nice day!

Congrats, awesome work

Congrats on your super fantastic victory... and of course congrats on becoming the top entry of 2011., keep them coming and waiting for ur tutorial....

thats a lot of work! wow! congrats!

Congratulations,the hard work has paid off !

Congratulations!! Looking forward to your future entries!!.

What can I tell you....... oh, well...... Congrats!!! waiting to see more....

WOW. Awesome work. Congrats

lovely ......

Wonderful job wings are beautiful along with everything else

Flawless.

Totally awesome with great composition (Rule of Thirds) and enviable complexity in construction. The little dragon is the weak point IMO. I wish the coolness of its tail extended to its body which seems more cartoon than realistic. Also, the dragon appears to be lit from the left while she is lit from the right.

Thanks for the suggestion Dan. I tried to make the dragon less cartoonish; added some texture to the wings, sharpened the whole dragon a bit and added the same glow as the tail (plus lighting on Libellule's face to match the glow). I also messed with the shading a bit but as her hand is not in shadow below the dragon I did not darken that portion of him, that was my reasoning for his lighting, with the glow added it is not so crucial now (I think). Hope you like the changes. Thanks again

Beautiful job, love the wings!

Lovely image, but the dragon is almost invisible.

Thanks, CMYK ... dragon is now enhanced a bit more. I didn't want him too strong as he is not really the focal point of the image but your suggestion had merit. Almost took him out completely as he seems to be causing a lot of trouble (which I guess is natural as Firetails are known for being mischievous little creatures)

The image was designed to be 16X20 and at that size you can see him quite clearly . Thanks again for the feedback.

I think the dragon is now distinct not distracting but still adds foreground drama.

Thanks Dan!

Absolutely gorgeous work, author! Love all that you did to the model, especially her face.

congrats

truely beautiful entry.. congrats on 2nd

Beautiful work....well done for 2nd

Thanks all so much for the vote, comments and favs!!!

Congrats..... beautiful image....

Nice work here...especially good shadow on the wagon...GL author!

Fabulous, well blended fantastic pitoresque mood!

lovely

nice

Thanks for comments....... and support!

lovely work great shadows and contrast between lights and dark.

like the colors............the sunrise gives a sense of hope in a bleak surrounding

Appealing orange scene. The extremely low sun on the horizon would seem to suggest much longer shadows, however, to the extent that the wagon should be just to the right side of the tree's shadow. And certainly the bed of the wagon would be shaded. (More shadows would add more drama. Also, with the low sun, I would experiment with slightly less saturation of the ground.)

I really like this picture and your treatment. My only suggestion is that the shadow of the tree is a little too dark and I would use the size slider to make it a little more diffuse...oh and I might turn the shadow into a layer to manipulate/tweak it around a bit.

Again, excellent work. All the best!

Thanks for comments... I will work a little more in the shadows.... thanks, Glockman, Aheman ,Dan, Ibadge.

UPDATE: Shadow for three enlarged and moved, desaturated field and wagon, added shadows to parts of the wagon.

Great entry, GL!

best entry in this contest!

Much improved except the angle of the tree shadow (good) is not matched by the angle of the cart shadow.

Thanks again for your comments.
Dan: Thank you I moved the angle of the tree shadow.

Great emotional depth and feel to this one. Bravo!

Stunning flaming sky

Beautiful, good work.

congrats

.. loved this entry.. congrats.on third place )

Thanks for support...... and comments....

Doesn't look like this was made from the given sources...SBS would be good.

sorry...i put up the wrong link for the dragon....i'm fixing it now.

having a problem editing my entry...i think my computer needs to cool down....but until i can get the proper info up there, the dragon source actually came from: "violet dragon"
by ~ImpalaStock at deviantart.com -
http://impalastock.deviantart.com/#/d2368ez

very nice entry, GL!

if I ignore the use of Source....

Nice colors n image

Great work on the wings

ty everyone

man you are amazing

keep on ROCKING, Mr. Cintiq,......hehehehe......yes you are briliant...! breathtaking entries..!:rockb)

man, thanks... it means a lot to me... well, it's just a speed illustration done in hours... so, forgive my shattered pixels & blank composition. A lot need to be fixed. BUT I run out the time...

sounds gay, dude...haha, nice idea dude!
love that techno-looking-eye! =)

Love everything in it.... lol, another congrats in advance.....

wow...awesome entry

Stunning

I like the story you placed on your entry and this creation, wow...magnificent!

cool