noiselab vs. Natsia | Travel deep into the looking glass...

[Saint Benedetta]

whoo, alice in wonderland!!
i watched the movie some nights ago...it gave me great memories. one of my favourite movies of all time. the oyster part made me cry when i first watched it!

i am also looking at borrowing the alice mcgee game from a friend (about time, lol)

[Natsia]

may I PLEASE rotate the canvas?
PLEASE? Im running out of ideas here.

[noiselab]

Hahahah sure Nats go ahead. And thanks Rush !

[Natsia]

THANK GOD!
Sorry about taking so long, you stumped me on your last one...

[DaVulf]

Wow noise. I don't know where you found the stock for that one, but they work perfectly together. Only a few small things I can see. The shadow of the knife on the girl is projected onto her skirt, but the sun is behind her. The other, the door to the rabbit's house (top edge) doesn't look blended into the rock. An easy way to mess with that is just to grab a soft eraser and start going over the top edge. This makes the door either look inset, or slightly darker (from shadowed overhang). Make sure not to use a 100% opacity brush though. Another way instead of the eraser is just to use a mask and paint with black in the same way.

Again, really nice work, I love the feel, and I think that is the best volley I have seen from you. In fact, that is one of the nicest volleys I have seen in the Arena for a long while (barring Chris' volley unfortunately).

[noiselab]

Dang, thanks a lot man ! Yeah when I got done with it I was kind of surprised myself. Thanks for the techniques as well, I'll make sure and use them in the future

[Natsia]

Sorry it took so long, Im rather pleased with how this turned out.

mad props to Gerbick for crits and imput along the way. Love you

[noiselab]

Hehehe that's pretty cool, the only thing is uhm the size is 350 by 600 yours is 300 by 600. Other than that, I like it ! I'll start mine when I get home from work, to which I am about hmm 4 hours late now

[gerbick]

Natsia... not bad. But allow me to kindly critique a few areas...

I loved the idea from the first sketch you showed me to the close to final version... you followed the idea of making a tarot card in the sense of Carnivale's opening sequence quite well. But I think you still could have made that look more like paper or a card... as it stands, it looks more like a bit of parchment almost with torn edges, not worn edges and the image is on top of it, floating. Working in details into the image would have worked in your favor big time.

Also, masking out the knives behind the masks would have popped out the knives a bit, and allowed you to throw a minor shadow on the knives in the same angle of the rest of the shading on the knives... and honestly? I think you could have gotten away with two knives instead of three to fully support the "between lovers" theme... two lovers is quite implicit.

Small things like the type having some of the type look worn off, or smudged would have added to it - just a layer mask away too! Also, if the lines were that irregular, then so should have been the text... just a small bit of variation, a bit of wavering would have added to the worn out look... the text on the ribbon should have been worked in more to make it look like it was printed on the ribbon than instead of looking like it were embossed and floating on the ribbon.

From that, I can say that I can pull apart your layers/image and see what's floating above, when honestly you could have made it a bit more "worked in" with the idea that you're recreating a playing card/tarot card.

Now, what I do like... the color palette is tight as hell. And that's a good thing... the antique colors and the reds compliment the entire layout. The fact that there's rarely a full-on white or total black works in your favor, it adds to the worn out look. The style of type used fits perfectly... I couldn't see a Times New Roman or Arial in this layout and see it still working. So the gothic fonts work quite well. The slight overlaid ornaments on the edge of the inside of the card as well as the weighted radial lines add a depth that if they were not there, this card would have fallen flat on it's face. It's the small as heck details that add to an image. That part added so much to it, imho.

I think with some polishing, the card would have come off as a bit better, but there's a lot of technique that showed that you had done a ton inside of your canvas. So I'm not calling you lazy, nor anything as serious; just saying a bit more work would have taken the image that much more over.

And so far, I'm loving this battle. Sorta dark, grimy, whimsical, yet dangerous. Both of you are pushing out some inspired work.

told ya' Arena... I'm back!

[Natsia]

Aw thanks hun.
Im not going to disagree with anything you've said because you and I both know this last one was a battle against time to get it out.
Im going to be re-doing this one properly now that I have time to work on it.
And you do realise that you and I have a date for a text lesson dont you?
Thanks G

[noiselab]

Ok so I thought I wouldn't finish by tomorrow, but I am very happy with the outcome, may I present : THIS !



PS : I unfortunatelly did not keep the stocks of this piece but there are about 5 different images in there and some heavy editing. I am actually very impressed myself ( not bragging ) this is the first of it's kind for me and I am very happy with the way it turned out.

[RUSHVision]

I think you did a great job on this one, noise. You did a good enough job of blending that it's difficult to tell which parts came from different stock.

There really isn't too much I can say in regard to finding any major flaws, so let the nitpicking begin.

At first I thought that the lighting on that one building was too intense. Either that, or the light on the building behind it wasn't intense enough. After further thought though, I came to the conclusion that it was quite possible that a piece of the sun was shining through a hole in the clouds and striking only that portion of the building. I've certainly seen stranger things.

The shadow lines seem to match well enough that it makes me think they came from the same photo, but the light values don't quite seem to match quite as well so if push came to shove I would have to say they came from different ones. It seems like there should be a little more ambient light on the right side of the tower when compared to the building on the left. I rather like the way the tower sits against the sky though, so if changes were to be made I think I would make them to the building on the left, because actually that entire thing is more brightly lit and holds more contrast in general than does the tower. Whether they come from the same stock or not, I think that matching the values a little more closely in this image might have made it downright impossible for me to tell if they were from the same photo or not.

Something else that caught my eye is the fact that there are several areas in the trees...most notably on the right side where the trees meet the sky...that are more blurry than the surrounding areas. I think using the sharpening tool on these spots would have helped make what is a good image even better.

This next thing could very well be something that wouldn't bother most people, so take it for what it's worth (whatever that is). For me, when I look at the line of the water on the bottom, it bothers me that it's not quite level. This may not be of great importance to some, but I would be sorely tempted to distort that so it was a little more even. Like I said, this is just me, and there is no rule of science or nature that says that is how it should be. It's just that it's off the horizontal by such a small amount that I would be compelled in a Monk-like fashion to 'fix it'.
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Ok, so what follows is just me rambling on as is my wont once you get me started up. Read this only if you absolutely have nothing else to do or are simply too curious about what the heck I might say after making a statement like that to stop.

One thing that I personally would have liked to have seen is a more obvious use of an element from Nats volley. At first I thought that you might have used Nat's card on the front of the building on the left since it's pretty similar in color and intensity. But did you just use hers for that bit up along the top?

What this (along with a budding resemblence to ct's work) causes me to wonder is if perhaps this was an image/idea that you have been working on outside the scope of this battle and that this volley was more about practicing that particular style that it was about sticking to the theme of this battle or using an element from Nat's image. Don't get me wrong, personally I think that's fine. Among other things, we're here to have fun, improve our skills and try new techniques. In that spirit, I only mention it as an additonal insight into my perception of this image as presented.

Upon further reflection I realized that I should probably go see exactly what guidelines for a theme you had set down before calling you out for not following it. After reading back through the thread I saw that you had actually set no theme at all. It was an assumption on my part based on what became the title of the thread after the battle had begun that led me to believe you guys were working with an 'Alice in Wonderland' theme. Sooooo...if you guys are working with that theme, then there wasn't much 'alice' in this most recent volley or in Nat's last volley either (other than a loose connection to the card people). If there isn't any set theme however, then this is where you get to wish you hadn't wasted the last few precious seconds reading all this crap about a theme.
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Overall, I think that's a real nice piece of work, noiselab. Like I said, all that stuff above is just me picking little nits. I can tell that you are working hard on improving your game it shows. Keep it up, man!

[noiselab]

Hey just woke up, after unoftunate 2 hours of sleep. Thanks a lot man. I wanted to make the red roof stand out a little on the grim background of everything else, but yes I noticed what you mean that it's not just the roof that stands out it's the bright ass light on the side of the whole building. The branches, got that, and everything else made sense ! Thanks a lot man.

[Natsia]

Side tracked today, will start something tomorrow.

[Natsia]

Noise, would you be so good as to pm me the stock of the clock tower?
Thanks
Edit: havent forgotten about you, feeling a little burned out I'll start that volley tomorrow afternoon after work.

[noiselab]

Hey No rush, I'm having a little trouble at home and I'm moving so if I disappear for a day or two don't be alarmed.

[Natsia]

Oi...
Good luck with that man, and thanks for the heads up.

[Natsia]

At first I liked how the light refracted off the chess board... Now it just looks cheap.bleh

[gerbick]

I hope you guys don't mind me stopping in...

Nats... I love the color palette, as well as the composition in your last image. I think with some work on some of the shadows and muting the colors a bit - think antique photographs - and a hand-written font on the picture instead of that typed font and using a warm grey instead by sampling the checkerboard and then perhaps applying a bit of a brush on a layer mask to make it look a bit older too than a brand new font...

The upper right seems to have gained some noise from upsizing, so I would have added a tad bit of noise and grunge to the entire image to make it all look like one whole antique scene.

But with that said, I see the direction you're going in/for, and I totally dig it. I like the composition with enough bits to keep my eyes jumping about and looking for more... and more.

Seriously, this looks like a design where you finally didn't second guess yourself and allowed yourself to finish it all up using your instincts and not using "what the Arena likes"... and I applaud you for that. I like the picture. Can't wait to see what else you guys do in this battle.

[Natsia]

Shot for the crit Gerbs.
Literally spent more time on looking for stock than I did on putting the elements together so Im not going to disagree on anything you've said.
... What? I was feeling lazy