Battletoads Pummel Piece

[srlew2]

Here's my pummel entry for this month. Any feedback would be much appreciated

[ghostcat]

Don't know if it's uncouth to critique your competition, but I'll post mine up for critique too, so here goes

Since I'm not 100% sure which toad is which, I will refer them as foreground toad, middleground toad, and background toad

Things I like:
1). Your inking is detailed and awesome.
2). The musculature on your figures is great
3). The face on the foreground toad
4). The perspective on the ship
5). The poses for the two foreground characters

Things that I think could use improvement:
1). The composition
There is a bunching of characters and lots of negative space. The main action is happening too far to the right. The viewer should be first looking at the two foreground characters and that should be more towards the center. There's also too much negative space (or in this case, outer-space) right in the middle of the piece. Cropping the foreground toad's toe isn't a good idea. Having the two background spacemen obscured by the foreground spaceman's arm when there's a lot of empty space looks weird. The star arrangement looks a little clumpy.

2). Some of the poses
The middleground toad's left knee is pointing out in a direction away from the main thrust of the the headbutt. The background toad's left arm is bent like he's moving it forward, when it should look like it's being thrown back. The rat's tail movement would be blocked by the edge of the cave he's coming out of.

Anyway, great piece, great match, and I can only hope that I've helped a bit!

[srlew2]

Not uncouth at all, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to give some feedback. Composition continues to be a weak area for me. I was actually pretty happy with the layout of this piece, but you bring up some great points that i'll have to consider in the future. On reason there's so much negative space is because I've read crits in the past saying that my comps are too cramped, but I guess I went too far in the opposite direction. If you could give me some more info on why cropping the toe is a bad idea i'd appreciate it. I know it's bad to crop at joints, but I figured having the toes curl up giving an indication that they're there would help.

[ghostcat]

No problem. Barely breaking the edge of the drawing is a tangent, and it's a bit awkward, but it's minor. If you are looking for some resources on composition, there are lots for the rules of photography composition you can find on google, and they translate to illustration. Rule of thirds, golden mean, leading lines etc. Of course you can break the rules to achieve certain effects, (symmetry for an unnatural feel, etc), but they are good guidelines to making a pleasing composition