Water reflection

No Such Agency

No Such Agency

New member
So I\'m painting up this little guy that the nice Italians who run the Chick Challenge sent me. I decided to put a bit of water on his base, and of course it has to reflect the torch:

monkeydemon002a.jpg


Well as you can see my first effort came out looking not only like total amateur hour, but utterly unconvincing. I\'m not even sure WHY it looks wrong, it just looks so very WRONG. I know part of the problem is that, like NMM, reflections like this would look different from different viewing angles. So I don\'t know which \"version\" to paint on. Consequently I think I way overdid it.

Any thoughts/suggestions, CMON?
 
K

KatieG

New member
My suggestion would be to treat it just like OSL. The reflection from the torch should be strongest near the torch and weaker further away. Right now, it\'s too even. I\'d also go with darker colors from the torch further away as well...
 
PegaZus

PegaZus

Stealth Freak
Well, since I thought it was lava before reading, I guess I could throw out a few things post-reading that popped out.

First off was that the directions of the reflection all seemed wrong. They\'re all pointing in different directions. You\'ll probably have to force it to be viewed from a single direction in order to make much sense of it.

The second thing that hit me was that you\'ve put the reflections on just the tops of the ripples, when they\'d in fact be reflected at the bottoms of the ripples as well. And, I\'d almost want to say that they\'d need to be painted nearly like gems, since the ripples would be translucent.

Finally after hitting a google image search of light reflections on water ripples, I\'m going to disagree with my first thought (but leave it posted) and expand on the second. The reflections from those images all seem to be on one side of the waves, but appear to be on both (or just the tops) on yours. But by being almost directly under the light source, I\'m thinking this is going to be hell to pull off. Good luck!
 
freakinacage

freakinacage

Well-known member
Originally posted by PegaZus


The second thing that hit me was that you\'ve put the reflections on just the tops of the ripples, when they\'d in fact be reflected at the bottoms of the ripples as well. And, I\'d almost want to say that they\'d need to be painted nearly like gems, since the ripples would be translucent.

Finally after hitting a google image search of light reflections on water ripples, I\'m going to disagree with my first thought (but leave it posted) and expand on the second. The reflections from those images all seem to be on one side of the waves, but appear to be on both (or just the tops) on yours. But by being almost directly under the light source, I\'m thinking this is going to be hell to pull off. Good luck!
Click to expand...

aye, think gems
 
green stuff

green stuff

Active member
Yeah, one sided reflections is the trick for this. You\'ll force the viewing point this way, but at least it\'ll work. And less is best IMO.

A few examples :

http://www.coolminiornot.com/105345
http://www.coolminiornot.com/164975
http://www.coolminiornot.com/200993
 
Einion

Einion

New member
Originally posted by No Such Agency
I know part of the problem is that, like NMM, reflections like this would look different from different viewing angles. So I don\'t know which \"version\" to paint on.
Click to expand...
I was worrying over exactly the same kind of problem just now. The question the other day about painting NMM silver got me to thinking about how I\'d paint something with reflective armour and bottom line, I think the only way to get this to work is to choose a fixed viewpoint and paint the reflections to suit. It means the figure doesn\'t look right as you rotate your viewpoint but that is built into NMM (or similar) to an extent.

Einion
 
Shawn R. L.

Shawn R. L.

New member
Very tricky illusion to pull off. My guess would be to make sure the water, without the reflections lean towards blue or simply cool dull colors and keep the reflections, as said above, gemlike. Just a twinkle or spot on each ripple.
water_reflections.jpg

Keeping the water \'cool\' I think will keep it from looking like lava. This, sort of, shows the cool/warm thing
sunsetlewis3699.jpg

Would be interesting to see your progression on this one.
 
mickc22

mickc22

Granddad!
have a look through Ericj\'s gallery
heres a couple of examples

http://www.coolminiornot.com/132086
http://www.coolminiornot.com/111965
http://www.coolminiornot.com/86272
http://www.coolminiornot.com/78320
 
A

arogers907

New member
I think you\'ve got the best suggestions you could hope for already. I would just echo:

1) Try for an uneven teardrop kinda shape
2) bring the highlights up and high crests of the waves/ripples in the water
3) bring shadows all the way down to the darkest color of your water.

I think the shape and the consistency in reflection is the biggest thing you\'re missing right now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back To Top
Top