Originally posted by Crow Haven:
The brightness of this image John posted is better (the eye is still very dark, though, as to look mostly like black, this robs it of life)...
I guess it's the use of so much grey all over the dragon and so little contrast of any other color on the main body which gives the grey plastic appearance. From anything but a close up shot he's going to look just dark grey with black shadows. The eye won't show whatever color is in there if this guy is reduced in size or part of a scene. He will need bright lighting to show any subtle color variations at all, but that will add highlighting problems due to the current shiney specularity of the skin causing extra glare. Colored lights are probably going to be the only working option, but if they come from sky coloration he will disappear within the scenery due to a lack of contrast coloration from the scenery and only the body shadows will make him distinct from his surrounds --- this even more likely if set amongst mountain/rocky terrain or any backgound with much detail in texturing. Skyborn allows for better visibility of the dragon but also, unless a closeup of it, reduction of his size in the distance will detract from his colorings in all but the brightest of daylight. This is just what I see from this model against this background in it's present update. A solution would have been a skin coloration of other colorings/markings/stronger light coloration contrasts on various parts of the body such as the undersides of all body portions, and a lot less of the overall monotones of greys, which although much easier to paint with really doesn't do a lot for the model, imo. More color I think could enhance the model -- only the Giger Alien pulls off the monotone colorings (yet colored lighting still was needed -- though mostly the filming kept the Aliens in the dark and rather hidden as they were sneaking around, fine for filming with action to add to it (and even with this dragon animated the enhancement of more coloring to its body would still be an advantage), not so good for still imagery without other color added)okay.
I have no expectation you or anyone else here will agree with any of this -- my opinions = that's all they are.
One other note on the model itself...the one area that I hope may be transformed through rigging and posing the creature is the area of the neck -- it looks to me very tree-trunk and stiff in appearance. The knee areas rather weak and tiny for such a large creature. The jaw area also very stiff and solid without any look of underlying musculature or bone. But overall it is improved from the first dragon quite a bit -- that one was a good effort but rather wooden all over -- but the eye of that particular dragon, however, had life.
---Maya
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