Hi all,

i noticed nobody liked my polar bears, now that's not a problem at all, but can you please comment then about the things that are not good. Just spit it out, i want to learn!
If you dont say what's wrong i will never learn. Please help me out here?

thank you!

ok. they look kind of flat, like as if they were just painted onto a flat wall. That pic doesn't work well with that perspective. Also, the railings turn almost black about halfway up at the edge of the grass and the tank. I wasn't sure if this was a shadow or what. I can tell you tried, and its good for a beginner. Keep at it and sooner or later you'll be doing 10 times better!

haha, yeah that must be something like a shadow. The bear was already in a tank on the picture but the picture was taken from the front so i turned it, scaled it.. i pulled the little handles 10.000 times to make the picture fit my frame. How can i make something less flat when i have a flat picture... any tricks for that maybe?

tnx.

Would look better if they were different bears or if you changed one a little like maybe move a couple of legs to different positions.

I don't recall the grass was that always in there or did you add it later.

making one of them smaller so that it appears to be further back in the tank would have added a little depth to it

Yes! that's it... starting to learn more and more here () about shadow's, depth, and perspective. Thanks guys!

I think it is an excellent idea! there's a couple of things you could have done, like make all the rails look basicly the same with clean edges" or make more bears by copying, then make them smaller and turn down the opacity so it looks like there further into the water, I think it was a very good idea though sometimes the dodge and burn tools at various opacity work for bringing more depth by adding highlights, midtones and shadows in different area's" I hope that helps
Oh another thing that works is the spherize filter" for depth and 3D appearances" ~

hey. first of all nice piece. pretty damn good for a beginner.
but here are the small things i picked up on. please dont take this to heart, i find others can pick up on a LOAD of things you cant see in the picture, it actually helps to get other to look at it before you submit stuff.

those were the main things. your main problem is your source picture. if all else fails get a source picture which is well "lit". then have a go at adding shadow in a new layer. it never hurts to practise

What might've helped is just taking a pic of a polar bear and cutting it out, then putting an underwater scene behind it, so that it doesn't warp the bear and you can position it freely. Another thing it needs is just basically details, like shadowing work, color-matching, and just all those small things that will come to you in time. The more you practice, the more advanced you will become and the more details you will notice that you didn't see before. Eventually you will be able to blend everything into a near-perfect chop where everything matches, there are few, if any, errors that are noticeable, and you will look back at this entry eventually and see exactly what the more experienced choppers can see. Keep at it, it's the only way to get better!

Wow good tips in these replies. Hey Smurfie I hope you don't mind if I learn from this too!

Course not Tofu! We are one big happy family here, all helpfull and kind. Please do learn from this as i want to share this with you my friend (getting sick allready? )

Thanks for the big picture... i worked on it yesterday, a few more things and i will update and hope it has improved!

Thanks all, i quickly go chop some more on it so i can update my entry.

okay... here it goes,... hope it had improved in some way!

oh, how can i create a realistic water surface? i did try but not realy happy about the result. I found it hard to make it. Wanted a bit more "movement" in it as the bears are swimming the water cant be still.