Check out my new wallpaper (comeback post?)

Well it's a really long time since I posted

I made a wallpaper for a fansite of the upcoming game Age of Mythology.

[url]http://www.mrfixitonline.com/attachments/wallpaper(2).jpg[/url]
First version

[url]http://www.mrfixitonline.com/attachments/caveofthescarab(1).jpg[/url]
Best version

The big sun-gem looks kinda sucky I think.

The second one is definately better, I love the textured background with the egyptians. reminded me of the crappy video called walk like an egyptian, or something like that. But its still cool. The scarab is always pretty sweet. good job good christian :D

Okay first off get rid of the red jewel thingies, they take away from everything else in the design. Now my second problem. The pinky jewel, Age Of Mythology, up top is to pastel for the rest of the design. If you want the design to be "old world" looking then you should make it richer looking by making it darker and perhaps more red then pink. Also the gold is nice looking but it's a bit new looking and so doesn't give that aged feeling that the hieroglyphics give. It's to new so perhaps give it a tarnish or something.

The Good Stuff

I really like the "Beetle" in the center it's very cool as well as the blue jewel which has that depth which gives it that realness to it.

The Hieroglyphics are really cool. They seem to appear with the light.

Cool design, all in all, just some a few problems that I can see.

Ok I like the way you made the images look real and metallic, but I COMPLETELY agree 100% with Kayflash.

i have to agree with everything said before. I love the wallpaper, but those jewels are distracting in some way.

And welcome back! (welkom terug ;) )

Mmmh yes, the big orange gems seem to draw a lot of attention to them. But I think they're pretty so I'm gonna leave them

Dude, lose the pink gem. The first one would be a lot better if you just lost the pink jewel and slapped what you wanted to say in a rocky text. The gem is great for the second one if you make the color the same for the top and bottom gems. And how did you get that goldish feeling on the wall?

I was expecting most would dislike the sun-gem you can consider it out.

Gold feeling, well, the "rockpainting" is very bright, not the kind of color you would expect from a cave painting, they mostly look brown/orange. So i made them look goldish (color dodge), I uses lightning effects to get the rock texture, I didn't use an omni light but directional so the entire wall was equally bright. Using omni light makes it looks the wall is on a globe. Then I adjusted the levels of it to give it more color. Then I shaded the outside with a low opacity black airbrush. This way it looked like the actual rock was lit by the scarab.

You might think it's just a rock texture, but this is what I wanned and I put some tought behind it.

When I opened it up , first thing I saw was disproportional use of color contrast . Whole image , exept for background , stands out and looks out of this place , gold would be a subject in this
situation , if you could make it rusty , or with slightly different approach . I wouldnt consider using KPT tools for gold effect ,
It makes plastic looks , and feel of those "made in china" 5$ golden jewelery ;) . Balance of colors comes with design , gems could be a nice addition , but they are crushing the whole image .

Well , I wasnt all that good ether , My first walls were abit same type . . Hint is , blend details od the bug , or the whole figure
in to background , or create image with increasing sharpness and contrast around gems/bug . Use some stuff in the edges of your wallpaper , to balance it out .

Oh yes , u gave it too much shadow.

I didn't use KPT for the gold, just lightning effects and curves

Do you mean that when you open up the picture you don't know what to look at first, like all the gems draw the attention, while the scarab should be the focal point?

Colors, yea other people have said that colors didn't really match. I see it to now.