not at all shitty gradients, nope.
Oh, and yes. You've only made 1 piece of artwork in your entire life. That's what I was saying, yes. You pinned the nail on the head there. Nice analysis.

ah, ok, please learn art terminology then, that's not gradient shading, that's soft shading, albeit on a grayscale instead of a colored one.
gradient shading is literally just applying a gradient across the image in the stead of shading.

if you don't like smoother soft shading that's fine, it's just a style, same as anything else.

No man that's gradient shading alright.

Gradient's are tricky sons a ♥♥♥♥♥es.

This seems like the perfect opportunity to pop in and say I really don't like Bombzeros art, regardless of the fact I don't like that style in the first place I keep noticing several things that you could be doing better, constructive criticism time!

Firstly, your proportioning is terrible, for example in this image,
the sand worms tail, tail pincers and face pincers fail at obvious consistences (the tail should be the same size for the entirety of its length, the pincers should be almost symmetrical, ect)
Numerous similar faults exist in your other works.

Now the gradients, and to get straight to the point I'm going to agree with Miggles (OhGodHowDidThatHappen) and say they look terrible. I know you're most likely going to defend them to the death and not going to stop using them, but I want you to seriously reconsider the next time you reach for that gradient tool. If you take a look at all similar styles, you'll notice that almost none of them use gradients, some use shading
but gradients are usually reserved for people who can't shade, or create very detailed pieces. Why doesn't anybody use gradients? Because simpler pieces greatly benefit from a cleaner look, and for another example, a flash animated show that has gained quite a following in recent times.The eye contains 1 gradient, only a single 1 directional gradient in the entire piece.

Finally, your lines and shapes need some work, but the only thing thats going to help that is practice. So, uh, keep at it!

Even if you want to call it "soft shading" it's still being used inappropriately.
You're right in one way in that it makes the materials it is used on look soft.

You don't want them to look soft.

You are shading a giant chitinous worm and a diamond. Neither of those things will reflect light in the way that you have shaded them implies.
Diamonds are sparkly and reflective, there will be a large variation in shades that cannot be simulated by just shading from top to bottom. It needs vastly more contrast than you have used and also a greater understanding of how light sources work upon objects with several refractive edges.

The worm should not be gradient shaded either. Even a soft bodied worm would need more definition than it has been given. You have shaded this as if it is one continuous object rather than a segmented creature, lazily letting your outlines do the work for you. If you are going to have shading then you should not use your outlines as an escape clause from having to apply it everywhere that it is necessary!
The segments form crevices which should naturally be darker than everything around because they are crevices. The head and tail which definitely aren't meant to be soft and fleshy should have harder lines (and the spikes should actually cast shadows, once again you are letting your outlines do the work for you!)

And let's not forget that your light source just doesn't make any sense anyway.


You can argue "it's not gradients" and "it's stylistic!" until you're blue in the face (and you'd be wrong, it's pretty much a textbook example of gradient shading) but that doesn't actually help the fact that ultimately it is an unattractive technique that leaves little definition in the objects and hurts your growth as an artist. Please do as Miggles said and focus on what you call "hard shading" and what virtually everyone else calls "actual shading"

To further add a point to that shading bsnss, stick your hand within a foot of a lamp. Notice the shadows? They're actually pretty well defined. There is a small gradient at the edge of the shadow due to the curvature of your hand, but past that point it's uniform in light level. The more diffuse the light source is, the bigger the gradient will be. The sun, however, tends to cast very sharp shadows by itself, so unless there's a total cloud cover, you'd usually want outdoor shadows to be sharp. Bonus points for that because it's actually easier than doing proper diffuse shading.

I personally go with up to three levels of illumination: Not lit, lit and "reflecting light right into your face". Reality obviously has more shades than that, but it isn't easy to keep track of them. Now, correct me if i'm wrong, but you used a soft burn tool to make the shading, right? If so, then just make it harder, and keep the light source and volumetric shape of your objects in mind. Also remember that outlines are sneaky bastards. Cubes have a hexagonal outline, but they shouldn't be shaded like so.


yaknowwhatimsayin? Not that i think you made this particular mistake, just be careful not to do it. Also, i know the corner facing the viewer is technically unlit, but sharp corners like those are typically better off being brightened (it looks better), not to mention that they'd probably reflect a lot of ambient light. Flat surfaces should normally have a uniform light level (possibly specular reflections at the very edges), while curved surfaces usually cast shadows upon themselves at some point and have a narrow specular in the "center" of the lit area. I'm saying this because, as chao mentioned, soft shading on a crystal doesn't do the crystal justice, especially when it's an angular one.


IT IS IMPORTANT. And this isn't including how most gems are transparent, which is hellacious to illustrate. Also, in case your crystal is a light source, note that light sources themselves are rarely shaded at all. Exhibit A: a lightbulb. Exhibit B: the sun.

Also, different note: While i don't endorse the use of the word "terrible" in conjunction with constructive criticism, these chaps are legitimately trying to help. While i'm pretty sure that i tend to get unreasonably butthurt for the strangest of reasons (and that most others don't), it's still worth keeping in mind.

You can legitimately tell when people don't want to help you at all, if all they do is insult you personally then say nothing of your work.

Hey guys, thanks for actual advice! much more helpful then insulting somebodies art and proceeding to offer nothing, while making false assumptions about what tools/methods/etc that they used to create said piece.

And Lizard, I'll keep that in mind.

Miggles, I would like to request that you just not comment on my art, I realize that sounds pathetic but your negative comments are not even slightly useful, at all, whatsoever. and you seem inherently determined to just dismiss anything I post as bad. so it's just a waste of space in the thread.

Thanks again to those that actually provided useful feedback. It's quite hard to get better when nobody will tell you what you are doing wrong.

EDIT: gonna try to reshade some things using a brush with a harder edge to it plus some more defined shadows based off of Shook's advice, will return with results in a bit.

FURTHER EDIT: Shook, I use an airbrush tool and layer settings, im working in PaintTool SAI which doesn't have several of the "shortcut" tools Photoshop does. (Need to get CS5 from my uncle, CS6 is a bit hard on my shitty processor with it's massive brush textures and everything). I also just noticed that how I am shading would be more appropriate to dim light or many multidirectional lights.

I'm going to call you a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ right now for numerous reasons.
1. I don't care how hostile I'm being, I'm giving criticism and did, in turn, spark the discussion which causes everyone else to give criticism.
2. Negativity has nothing to do with it, and if you're going to act like Mr. Happy-go-lucky sunshine that reels back at any time anything even slightly unhappy springs forth then you need to take a reality pill and realize: not everyone is nice.
3. Calling your gradient effects "shitty" isn't even rude or nonconstructive because you didn't even try! So to be honest you're looking at me through a darker lense than you should. I WAS giving constructive criticism.
4. You can't deny me of my right to critique your work on an open forum with open right of speech, especially if you're going to specifically post work in an art dump to get feedback. You wanted feedback, and you got it. Just because you didn't get the praise you wanted doesn't mean that it isn't there and that it isn't supposed to help you. I was TRYING to tell you what to do to help make your art better and you threw it out just because I said it wasn't already perfect.

Maybe I am being too aggressive, I don't care. At first I was trying to be nice and tell you what was wrong but you started acting like I was some big bad troll trying to degrade your work, and I got pissed, so when I reacted you seemed to think that's how I was always acting from the first place.

He requested, he can't do ♥♥♥♥ to make you but he asked nicely.

Also, I care.
It makes me sad.
I'm going to go cry in a corner now.

No you uh...
You actually didn't give him any criticism.
All you gave were insults.


Pictured here: No advice

Pictured here: No advice

Saying "stop using gradients" does not count as telling someone how to improve as an artist. You need to explain why and provide alternatives.
Just repeating "you're ♥♥♥♥ and gradients are terrible" does not achieve anything.

Plus there is frankly just no need to be rude about it anyway. Tell someone something calmly and they'll listen, start hurling expletives and they'll (rightly or not) completely disregard what you are saying.
Perhaps I could forgive the hostility if you had actually posted anything of merit but you didn't, the post is all bile and no merit.

Then after that you have the nerve to insult him again under the guise of explaining how you were giving criticism?
If you'd posted this ♥♥♥♥ in my board's WIP topic you'd be enjoying a 48 hour time out.

Oh and as a final note;
"Calling something isn't shitty isn't an insult because it is" is among laziest examples of an excuse I've ever heard.

So Shooks, at it's base something along the lines of this? (Barring obvious shittiness born of just quickly sketching it out)

pretty much just focusing on what is and isn't shaded(lowlights), and what is and isn't direct lit(highlights).
Would probably also look better if I applied a slightly softer edged brush, but I just used a solid one for this quick example.

I can immediately notice that it makes the segments more pronounced, I clearly need to adjust the linework to help emphasize that though.
fixing this would likely be a couple hour project though if I wanted perfection.

Image forbidden.