Geisha with Flower

[jujubee]

Here's a piece I just finished.

[cocolas]

the rendering is very cool...I think the background could be a little more subduded...right now the background and the subject are competing for attention.....


the subject itself is kinda creppy.....don't know why but it kinda give the creps...hehehe......it's kinda like the clown in the movie "IT"....this is the Japaniese version though :P


paul.

[Trapezium]

Nice job on the eyes lips and hair (how'd you do the hair?). Could use some work on the nose though. The parasol doesn't quite look like it's positioned under her arm or on her shoulder though.

Keep it up,
--Jon

[dusan]

Looks more like a man, infact a plump boy than a girl. Im not exactly sure what it is but im pretty sure that it has something to do with the eyes.

[Geddart]

Heyhey... finally some character work again! And it looks good!

I like how the umbrella focuses the attention to the character but i think you should take this idea a little further. Right now the Umbrella is very saturated what brings it in the foreground too much. Make it less saturated and maybe even blurred (DOF). It is especially usefull cause the cloth of the geisha has so much of the same red in it.

I really like the pale skin and it's shading. Good work here.
About the Eyes. Well... the upper Eyelid has very much flesh in it. But this is personal taste. There are people that look like it. Really nice are those little fuzzy hairs around her head. Good you added this little Detail!

Definately keep it up!



Hope you don't mind i took your image and changed the background in photoshop. I made the color of her skin even more pale so it does not leak into the background. I also made the red on her cloth a little different so she stands out a bit more. Of cause all this is just personal Opinion and style.

[nikulu]

I like the image the way it is right now. Desaturate the umbrella and using DOF makes her seem like standing in front of a backdrop.

Very nice work!

[jujubee]

Thanks for the critique. I personally don't think she looks like a boy - but what can you do - I've seen uglier people before. The umbrella isn't really being held in her arm - it's just a background I put in there - perhaps it's stuck in the ground or a friend is holding it for her. It was a concern at first but then I said screw it. Creepy like the clown in "IT"? Well, she is a geisha and they tend to wear white makeup with bright red lipstick...

Thanks Geddart - your critique is always on target. I like the version you did with the desaturation. I hadn't really thought about it that way - what I was going to do was to add some DOF to the bg but I just left it the way it was. I tend to go for the full blown-out color look on the other-hand even if it competes with the subject. I like very loud and bright colors for some reason.

Thanks Nikulu for your compliment.

As for the lighting, there's one red omni and a HDRI. I ended up drawing in the speculars for the hair by hand (a speckled customed brush set on dodge.) The hair is a mesh I used from DAZ, but I ended up tweaking it considerably. I didn't like their fake blue looking textures so I ended up taking textures from pictures of my own head from many different angles and making tileable bitmaps with proper UVW coordinates. To make it even more realistic, I gave the edges a slight blur and manually drew loose strands with a pen tablet. The hairline was created by lusing the lasso and selecting out the area - I then applied feathering and manually drew strokes using a 1px brush. This was repeated several times on different layers.

As for the makeup, I selected out the face/neck and copied it to different layers, filled it in with a color and played with different blending modes. On separate layers I laid in the colors such as red and changed the blending/opacity to give her some blush and eyeshadow. The speculars on the lips were done by hand.

The eyes were composites of real photos with 3d modelling.

[UBIKmh]

I've been looking at this image and trying to figur out why your geisha looks like a man. A kind of cross-over euro-thai transsexual.

One of the key factors is the chin. It's too big, the jaw is too firm, too manly. Only slight though. With faces these things are very subtle. The euro-thai is probably in the eyes; too european. Not japanese at all (was that your goal?). For japanese you need a much rounder face, bit higher cheekbones too.

Apart from that I think the image is very well done. Specialy with the blurred background in the second version. Very good focus. Don't know about the flower though. In japan nearly everything has a symbolic meaning. Maybe you should dive into that and carefully choose a flower.

For a real traditional Geisha the face should be totally white, no subtle hues of pink or red. The purety of white should prevail.

Marc

[UBIKmh]

Maybe these links can help.
http://www.whatever.net.au/~amaya/ge...o-fan-7.3.jpeg
http://www.aikikai.org.yu/images/geisha.jpg
http://home.satx.rr.com/fernandoanzaldua/Geisha.jpg

Marc

[Lukedwyer]

cool peice as a whole, I think you could work a little on the head she looks a little manish....no offense SHES A MAN.... MAN!!!

[jujubee]

Well, being 1/4 Chinese and 1/4 Japanese, 1/2 Italian, 100% American and living constantly between three worlds I'd have to respectfully disagree. I've probably spent more time looking at Asian chicks clothed and unclothed then any of you have. No offense.

[dellis]

Thats funny....jujubee....that kind of experience looks good on the resume.

[jujubee]

Lol. Well ok. I'll give them this much - the more I stare at it she could go both ways which is a hard thing to accomplish IMO. It's like one of those sterograms. I always thought of myself to be fair and balanced...

If noone ever said anything I wonder if this would have even been noticed by others.

[Trapezium]

That's cool I think the eyes look like an older Asian female no doubt.

Hey, I was wondering, since you mentioned all the Photoshop post work, if you wouldn't mind posting the render fresh out of VRay. I don't quite get what you're saying about how you made the eyes. So are the totally composited in PS?

You should at least give some of the suggestions a try just to see how they could help.

--Jon

[jujubee]

Hey, I was wondering, since you mentioned all the Photoshop post work, if you wouldn't mind posting the render fresh out of VRay.

Here's a base photoshop state - at which state I can't recall as I often condense layers. I literally had four 300 dpi renders at one point - all over 85,000 KB each. Hence I deleted three of them. One to mainly clean up the eyes, a separate one which tweaked the lighting, one to render a texture for hair correction/dress, and another for whiter skin to overlay in PS as makeup.



You can see that the hair is less refined (had to do that over three times), the eyebrows are all funky, her skin imperfections are showing, the eyes are red cause of an omni behind her head (which I still couldnt figure out the cause.) What you don't see in this cropped image is some of the clothing self intersection which I also cleaned up.

I don't quite get what you're saying about how you made the eyes. So are the totally composited in PS?

Sorry for the confusion. The eyes are actual geometry- I didn't like the reflectance/sheen that the material had with HDRI lighting. So I went in and overlayed the shine with an acutal closeup of a reflection from a photograph. I had also positioned a red omni in the back of the head and the red came right through parts of the eyes which I had to fix via clone, painting, and patching.

You should at least give some of the suggestions a try just to see how they could help.

I will keep some of them in mind for future projects. I'm not adverse to suggestions or critique. Unfortunately I'm overburdened with work presently and I don't have the luxury of time to dedicate to this.