Pandora Avatar

After much struggling and a very long time, I finished Pandora in time for the KublaCon painting competition. I've got a lot of comments on this model so I'm going to diverge from my normal format a bit.

Feedback:
All along the way of working on this model I was soliciting feedback from a number of people and got lots of useful perspective. It was definitely a change from my normal method. Since this model was just for fun (there's no rules for her currently), I felt fine taking my time to get her done. It was definitely worth it. I feel like the additional time was well spent, even though there are still things I wish I could have done better.

Challenging Sculpt:
This sculpt presented a real challenge to my skills, and admittedly I think it was above my skill level to paint. The biggest problem is there's a lot of negative space in the lower half of the model. This worked against me heavily when trying to create a better overall composition of the piece. Try as I might, I just didn't pull it together entirely.

Competition:
This model was admittedly planned as my secondary entry for the competition (behind the Lady Justice crew), but I ended up treating it like a primary entry. It won a gold in the open judging which I am completely stoked about. In addition to the award, I got a chance to speak with one of the judges (Jody) who I respect very much. He's given me good feedback before and it was great to get his thoughts...

Judge's Feedback:
* The face, although a good attempt, doesn't read well enough. I knew this was a problem, and he said he was impressed with the attempt, but it's a challenging effect to pull off for even a master painter.
* The OSL needed to be more aggressive. This was something I suspected, but Jody's input put it into better perspective. Muting the rest of the color scheme would have helped exaggerate the light sources as well, and that would have helped the overall mood.
* The blue cloth is another cool color which competes with the cool green. This was a huge revelation. The greens and blues are both relatively cool colors in comparison to the reds of her skin and hair. It didn't even occur to me that the greens were primarily cool colors. Using a warmer color in place of the blue may have created a better overall color balance.

Final Thoughts:
Overall, I'm still pretty stoked. This was a challenging piece and I learned a lot (and I really do mean A LOT). I am especially thankful to all the people that gave me input on this model as I worked on it. I've posted it on CMON to see how it ends up getting rated, so feel free to cruise on over and vote!