Just realized I messed up a whole illustration because of one dumb oversight

I was showing my WIP at a local meetup in Austin last Thursday and this older artist named Dave pointed out that my character's shadow was falling in the wrong direction compared to the light source. He was right, I had spent like 4 hours on shading without even checking which way the sun was supposed to hit. Has anyone else had a simple fix like that totally change how a piece looked for the better?

3 comments

3 Comments

faithrodriguez9d agoMost Upvoted

Went back and fixed the same thing on a piece last month. It was just a shadow angle thing but it made the whole image feel way more grounded after I flipped it. Dave sounds like the kind of person you want at a meetup, someone who actually looks at your work and speaks up. That kind of feedback is gold, even if it stings a little at first.

the_lee8d ago

@faithrodriguez shadow angles are a killer. Good fix.

amy3028d ago

I just read this article in ImagineFX about how even pro comic artists will flip their canvas upside down to catch shadow errors like that, it's wild how our brains just assume things are right. @the_lee mentioned something similar in a thread last week about how we get "art blindness" after staring at a piece for hours. That Dave guy sounds like a real asset, someone who will actually tell you the hard truth instead of just saying "looks great." My buddy Jenna had a whole piece where she realized her moonlight was coming from two different angles, she had to repaint the whole sky but the final result was way better for it. Small fixes like shadow angles are the difference between a piece that works and one that just feels off.