Amen to that!

Hide all the breakables! That guy looks hungry. Very realistic k10w3. Are his eyes open or closed. They look closed. If so maybe having them open will lend more macabre to it, make it look more menacing.

Karen this looks much better. Bravo.

I see his eyes very open and nasty at that. Maybe it's cause you're on a laptop, but this guy is looking stariaght at me and means business. I am not hannging around to find out what he wants. I guess this all a compliment to you Karen. I'm learnng along with you, as I copy paste the advice for later use.  

I might as well throw one in i've been sitting on for a bit. Sorry... imageshack is not responding. Trying again. For some reason its taking a very long time to upload. The hell with it. Twenty minutes is to damn long. Its the last Halloween wall I made. I was a bit reluctant to upload it because the last couple did rather poorly. That's why I want to put it here. Maybe later.

Yup -- all my walls from this point forward will have wide screen offerings because that's what I'm personally using now.  I treated myself to a new 22 inch monitor (1920x1080 resolution) since they had come down in price and I spend so much time staring at one.  Had I realized how much less crowded I fell working, I would have bought one a long time ago.

Thanks, Frankie.  I just not have turned the contrast up enough on the 1280x1024 version, and will need to fix that.  The wide screen version which I'm wearing on my desktop doesn't have that.

It's so good I'd be afraid to wear it on my laptop. He might jump out and do something. In 3d I bet it would look awesome! I'm trying again to upload the wall.

This one I don't know about. I did it before I.R. put me wise to the correct way to do walls.

Lighting in foreground 'grass' looks cut/paste...doesn't connect/blend with tree area behind.

Don't copy/paste multiple elements repeated....birds...grey 'ghost' thingies.

Smoke is wrong, not just cutoff.

Objects in foreground don't share lighting quality with background...again cut/paste.

Great stuff! I know exactly hope you feel. I went from my 17" laptop to a 24" 1920x1200. Had I known I would have asked for your resolution, 1920x1080. Enjoy, and BTW it 's a pleasure talking with you.

skyzyk,is right on few points...I,as the 'artist' can explain away the others...snicker.

The joint of the two left mountains does need work but not blurring...what looks un-natural is the smoothness...the left edge has no fine bumps along it like the right side does...so it looks slightly 'shopped'. Easy to fix.

The mountain and clouds are not on the same layer but I see his point about shifting the white clouds to the center to allow a little more gradation from evil to good.

Angel smaller? no way man! too cool just like that!The sword?yeah,its botched...I can explain the fire direction with tons of reasons but the sword itself is way awkward.

The shadows are the biggest thing that will give away bad 'shopping'.And wayyyyyyyyyyyy the hardest thing to incorporate.But in a weird way you do get some leeway in directional realism.This has been proven many times by pro photographers and the Lunar landing hoax dipshits.

Mythbusters did a terrific episode on this very thing.Shadows dont always appear parallel in a photo.This can be lens distortions and especially terrain.Still...yes,the shadows in my image dont work well...especially the car...because it was done QUICK AND EASY(which equals crappy).

The car being overly sharp compared to the rest is very slight but it IS just enough to make the sharp eyed viewer KNOW you shopped it in.

This long winded post is to reinforce what I have said already...dont bother uploading if you cant link to your sources or permissions and DONT BE IN A HURRY.If you have a deadline,start sooner or scrap it til next year.Sorry,I dont want to see your half finished work.

Karen's zombie critter was pretty good but because it was nearly halloween she stopped working on it an up it went.Not the end of the world but now she will likely move onto a new project.Again,no real big deal but the image only needed a little more work IMO.And...the only reason I say"a little more work" is because Karen's skills are above the average uploader and once you become good at something the critiques get harder and more is expected of you...because we know you are capable.

Its hard to critique the below average artist in the same way you dont yell at fat man for not running the hundred in 10 seconds.

Be your own hardest critic just not to the point you never finish anything...no art is ever finished...

I want to thank k10w3 and Jafo for their opinions on my wall. I couldn't quite figure out what the problem was as all this is really new to me. I'm glad I didn't upload it. BTW ... there was no copy/pasting. Those are brushes I downloaded from PStuts while I was checking out their tutorials The smoke was an afterthought and yes it is cut off at the top. I noticed that after I finished it. Again ... thanks for advice. Now you can critique this one.

This is the last of the Halloween walls. Already too late I know but it gives me something to think on till next year and plenty time to practice.lol

The planet was deliberately left partially transparent to take advantage of the stars close to it. They represent moons and marking in the planet's atmosphere.

This is exactly what I needed to know. The starfield, the galaxy upper left, the planet are all brushes from Obsidian Dawn. They are deliberately blurred but not by me. Repeated application of the brush makes it looks very bright and somewhat distorted. As for NASA images ... I got tons of those. The nebula is also a brush from Obsidian Dawn but they are geometric images with glows around them. The face is supposed to be a ghost but I'm thinking they really don't work for me. The reason I put up the last two was to get 'your' feedback specifically. I'm really not that much into the whole ghosty/ghoulie thing.