The spots on the babies are so cuuute >u< I also love the tails, really helps push them beyond looking like just deer! On that note I think it'd look super cool if the legs were more tree-like beyond being wrapped in vines but I know that would be too big of a change haha. Keep up the good work!

I absolutely love these. The only thing I would recommend is to make the upper arch on the male hatchling's eyes a bit less extreme, to better match the other genders/ages.

So, I was a bit hesitant to post since I'm not entirely sure what is being looked for. Krin doesn't want personal likes/dislikes, but really that is all I can offer... I know hours have been spent on these, but no matter how much time has been spent, there is always room for improvement and you will never make everyone happy.

That said, I have no issues with the poses of the adults. I think they look lovely. The only thing that jumped out at me when I saw the adults, was the poor male is developing peach curl (where's my fungicide!?). But, having lost a tree to it might make me a bit more twitchy. :-P. I am excited to see different flower and leaf mutations, so not a huge deal if the default remains peach curl.

I also find the white coloring under the males chin a bit odd and gives the chest ruff a weird shape. It would look better just having it the same brown as the rest of the upper neck. A pretty easy fix, I would think.

The baby male's face is off to me. I think it's the pointy cheeks, but not entirely sure. I don't really pay much attention to the babies, though, so not really that big of deal.

Really, pretty minor things and overall I am very happy with them. I can't wait to see the dryad traits on them. :-)

Please provide as either an accessory or a petpet, a butterfly for the tips of tails (male) or ears (female), just a thought. As for the art, I said all I intended to months ago.

Think it's supposed to be elk like.

Me looking at new art: Oooooooooooooo.

Makes sense, but I cannot find a photograph of an elk looking behind her/himself with the head raised above the back.

Then again, I am known for complaining that female Sylesties' poses tend to look twisted/crooked, as I am a crusader against the "broke back pose" in female superheroes, avatars, etc., etc. I am perhaps overly sensitive to lineart of females in twisted positions.

Also, Fimbry's post showing the doe without leaves suggests that some of the neck's apparent thickness is illusory.

As a lover of all things deer these pictures are so stunning and I will be getting so many more of these guys now :D

I am really looking forward to these coming out! but I kind of like the face of the old male hatchling better. Great job!

Autumn leaf w/ white underbelly

Normal Leaf w/ white underbelly



The Construction Criticism:


As a few other users have pointed out already, the leaves *particularly* on the male adult look a bit ill. I Mainly believe this is an issue of the shading and lineart that makes them so bubbly and bumpy looking. For me this has to be the biggest turn off of the new lineart, they look fleshy and squishy and it's deeply uncomfortable for me I simply cannot un-see it. I believe this was an attempt to make them look lighter and more dynamic looking but... it ruins the texture for me. My mind tells me they're either incredibly crunchy or soft like a stuffed animal. Like each bump is stuffed with stuffing and squishy.


I really like Catinheadlights edit of the leaves,, they look much smoother and like the original, more like a healthy leaf and less like a spinach leaf.


Spinach leaves and other plants leaves can naturally just look like this, however, more often than not bubbly leaves are a sign of pest damage, viruses, and sometimes over fertilizing.

Examples:




I went ahead and made my own version of the leaves that doesn't look autumn leaf-ified because... I don't believe the ruffled leaf should be the default texture.


Edit: I saw in chat Krin calling most of the criticism on this thread the equivalent of "oh its gross and I don't like it."To be clear, that's not what I'm doing here. This is what i believe is constructive criticism and not just my (one persons) thoughts on the Faeloras leaves.

(ex. "The only thing that jumped out at me when I saw the adults, was the poor male is developing peach curl (where's my fungicide!?).", "fleshy and tentacle-y", "sick", "the adult males leaves look scrungly, like leaves that have been infected by the things that make them produce too many cells in certain places.", "Rubbery? Too thick/bulgy?", " I do agree with others that the neck leaves/petals, especially on the male, look a bit too thick. I would love to see the Faes having a bit more of a delicate look to their foliage.", "As several people have mentioned, the shading on the male fae's petals makes them look a bit thick." )


I'm saying that they look sick because they *do* look sick as shown above. I don't say this with any hate or malice, I'm well aware how much time the art team must put into these designs as an artist myself (although I don't pretend to be as experienced/good as them for a second) and so I don't make this criticism from a totally ignorant point of view. From an artists perspective, the shading of the males leaves don't match the females, which is why I have the issue I do with the males and not the females, plus I've always assumed the females is supposed to look more like a flower.


Here I roughly circled the spots of light and shadow. you can see here that most of the light spots are round, which...

The leaves are shaded around a round highlight.


Hence why I think they come off 'fleshy; is because rounded things are usually thick and/or stuffed. Its not helped by the line art, which is also rounded.


Also to be clear, all of this ^^^ Is not for the artists, this is for the non-artists who might look at this post ^-^ I hope these examples/layouts explain more clearly what I mean when I say I "see the texture". The way that the light hits things helps your brain figure out what texture it might be.




Here is my edit next to the original! You might notice a few other things I changed other than the leaves but, ignore those for now. I'm going to put them in my "probably not constructive criticism" section.

Unfortunately I don't even have the barest handle of cell shading, and my shading style is very different than the one that the Sylestia artists utilize. But I tried my best to get something that still looked good while being closer to the default-smooth leaf that the Faes have right now.

I would not mind the wrinkly-bumpy leaves being a mutation, but I'm pitching for a smoother default leaf.

Aside from the leaves, the male hatchlings back being so skewed looking was another thing people pointed out that I agree with. It's bent too much in my opinion and he'd look less.. spinless and floppy if it was straightened out just a bit.

As also mentioned, his face is a bit round for a deer-based creature, maybe making his face pointier would help? Someone said dog-like, and I think its the nose.

Oh yeah, and when I first saw the female I was pretty confused about her torso and its overall length? Her body is *very* long and it also seems to taper in the back?? Like, why is her rump so small compared to her shoulders and chest? I think this was done for perspective but it looks really weird.



Onto my Probably-Not-Constructive Criticism section, or also the: Too-Late-To-Change now section



Here I did a quick trace over of my edit minus the leaves (you can see the old ones underneath lol).

And then my trace next to the original





The horns look very off balance to me, I used something called the envelope method to show you what I mean. (I learned this when learning how to draw poses, to draw an 'envelope' around the pose youre referencing so when you're drawing the pose yourself you know that if you're going outside of the shape something needs adjusted. You can also see how things are balanced shape-wise.)
Now as im about to say below, I know that realism isnt the main concern here, but after looking at pictures of other deers horns and using the same method, I think I see what was bothering me.




I've circled the tips of the horns with blue so you see what I mean better. Typically, the last er-- spike? I'm not sure the technical term for it, but the last spike is the longest because thats the base that all the other points are growing up from. Ignoring the fact that there also seem to be points that go-- downwards? Which I think also isn't usually typical-- I think that lengthening the last point would help the horns look less boxy.


This way there's a more clear tip on the horn, where you can see that that's the base horn the other points are protruding from.


After looking at pictures of deer, I moved the front legs forward some to offset the overly-protruding chest. But after reviewing Krins post on this thread talking about how realism isn't their main goal, I decided this wasn't really important.

I smoothed out the line on the chest underneath the dark brown fur, since someone mentioned that it looked strange and I can't help but agree. Ah, the most annoying thing to me other than the leaves was just... this little *gap* between the back and the leaves.



I don't know why its such a focus for me, maybe it's because I can't help but image the back being completely straight right up to the neck like a 90 degree angle because theres no visible slope up but??? It was something else that I ended up changing.