Troll Portraits

[Gyraffe Master]

Hi, it's been a while again, but here are 2 new takes at the whelp. It was suggested several times that trolls are supposed to be grey, and more brutish and menacing.

The color should be grey now, still a tad blueish maybe, but not Smurf-like as before. The eyes are glowing like Grüü's. I also removed the pupils, since I suspected that it was those Bambi eyes which weren't present in the line art that made people think the whelp was too cute. I guess empty eyes without pupils are another cliché to make humanoid fantasy races look more mysterious, apart from those pointy ears.

For the second picture I added a hand-scribbled texture that is a little like that stone thingy from the fantastic 4. Perhaps it can make the skin look more interesting, if not stone-like. It can most certainly be improved upon, just wanted to know if it's the right direction.

[TL]

I think the concept of the gnarled/stony texture on the second one is definitely a lot more interesting looking, but it does need some finishing up. At present the skin is still shaded as a flat surface, making the scribbles look more like he has tattoos or visible veins than knobs or crags; surface lighting needs to be tweaked around the bumps to make them pop out just a little bit, IMO.

Other than that it looks pretty cool, although maybe the color on the loincloth could be tweaked to differentiate it from the skin color. It's good that it's not very flashy or vibrant in color but it could use a little more contrast against the skin.

[thespaceinvader]

I'd suggest it needs texture, not just colour - at present, the lines you've added (god concept, btw) look reasonable, but they look like lines, not rocky bits, as TL suggests. I'd suggest maybe not going quite so high-contrast and shiny, unless you want him to look polished and plasticky or river-pebble-y.

You may want to take a look at some reference material to give yourself some ideas.

[LordBob]

While I agree with the need for rugged, rock-like troll skin, the texture you applied reminds me of a tatoo instead. I don't think it's the shape, but rather because the skin texture is a plain shade of grey whereas the lineart is black ; when analyzing the image, your mind automatically reads the lineart as "deeper" than the texture.

What I'd suggest (feel free to ignore this if you already have plans to improve the texture) :
- Cracks in the present colour should be thin, as if they were only light scratches in the skin.
- Wider cracks should be given depth (for instance, by adding darker, thinner lines within the crack)
- Part of the texture could be in a shade lighter than the surronding skin : rugged troll skin is likely to have both cracks and relief
- The linework shouldn't be pure black

Now the eyes. Their present style gives them a glassy, unnatural glow, though not everyone will mind it. What you could try, if you're not satisfied :
- If you mean them to glow, then add some orange-ish shades in the dark patches around the eyes, and cut the white reflexion.
- If not, I'd keep a similar tone but add pupil and iris, with a wide pupil (trolls being creatures of the dark, their eyes have likely evolved to give them better night vision) Here's a quick scribble of what I have in mind.

[Kestenvarn]

I like the linework for this. Did you intend to give him a comical facial expression, though?

[Skizzaltix]

Actually, the lines on the second one remind me of woad... Though, I'm not sure that was what you were going for
Nice work! Though, I do agree with LordBob on the eyes--My first thought when I saw the head was, "...He looks a little bit like a stereotypical alien" :/
Also, I think you want to texture the loincloth--It's a little bit too shiny right now.
Finally, I think you want to move his head down a little and possibly rework the shaping of those muscles around his neck--To me, they look a little bit like a stiff, thick collar of some sort
Anyway, great job! This is coming along really well