Wow, thanks a lot! As I mentioned, the thing that bothered me most, was the fact that the character and the background seemed like two seperate things. Your tips make much sense, and I'll certainly keep them in mind next time ^_^
Usually I "shade" white parts with blue. I didn't do this with the furre, because I wanted to make her really snowy white, as it'd give contrast with her hair and eyes. I won't make her hair a colder colour - simply because my hair colour is a warm one. It would perhaps be better to make it colder in this pic.. but I don't think that I'll make a pic with a cold atmosphere like that anytime soon anyway. But if I do, I'll edit the hair colour slightly ^_~
Um.. I was talking about the snowy white fur. Actually I wasn't intending to make the background myself - I just wanted to grab a random snowy background. But I couldn't find one and just started to make one myself.. and kinda forgot about the blue/grey shading thing. It seems very stupid to me now.. but ah well. I'll learn from my mistakes ^_~ It'd indeed be better to add blue to her fur here, I agree with you fully.
And anatomy.. I only started to draw with the intention to improve about a year ago.. and I really didn't start to improve until a few months ago. Anatomy has always been a weak spot of mine, but I'm learning. Recently I've been really "watching" people (hoping they wouldn't notice! O.o) to study human anatomy, and I'm learning from that too. Over the past few months I've gotten better with drawing clothes (which, however, still need more improvement!!!), and now I'm going to try and improve anatomy really hard. ^_^ Hair is high on my list as well X-x I don't think I want to go for a realistic hair style.. much rather something Anime-ish. I still have to find out X.x This time I just wanted to make it more.. hairy, you know? It always looks like, when I draw hair, it's made out of one piece. I was trying to avoid that this time.
If you really wish to edit my picture, you have my permission. I'd love to see the results ^^ The only problem is that the .psp file (with layers) is about 87 MB large X-x But there, the size is like 300%. I'll see if I can shrink it down (as I don't think you'd want to work from the .jpg file... would you?), but I wonder if I can shrink it down to 1 MB (Hotmail account - can't send files larger than that). But I don't think there's much need for it, as I understand your tips very well ^_^ So it's up to you.
Thanks a lot, Athena! You're about the first one that gives me some useful criticism! ^_^ It's highly appreciated.
For someone very new to CGing, you're off to a superpromising start. I recommend you go look around at different tutorials, maybe even look into digital painting, and...work into making your textures that much more natural (the hair, for instance, is really advanced compared to a lot of different types of haircoloring, but it's not quite to photorealism yet--if that's what you were going for).
I'd also watch taht you make sure your style all "comes together." -- How often have you seen an animated character with photorealistic hair? There needs to be cohesion when it comes to both character design and scene design.
Uh, but I really just said too much. What I Really wanted to do was offer some tips for making your BG blend a bit better with your char:
Your background's made of blues, right? But on your character, the only thing blue is her eye, and even that doesn't 100% match the blue in her background.
So! I'd recommend taking colors from your background and putting them into your character. The lightest "white" in your snow, there? Try it out on your char. Maybe lighten it some. She'll look better integrated, though, being slightly bluish than being just paperwhite.
Secondly, her hair is a warm red (a red towards orange), and it's the only warm thing in the picture...if you made it slightly pinkish (a cool red, a red heading towards blue, kinda purply, then?), it may also work a little better.
If you really want, send me a copy of this, and I'll try to show you what I'm talking about...and fix some anatomy issues I see, if you want.
Thanks for letting me babble!
my art: www.side7.com/art/daniwill