Okay. So over the course of the next week, I'll be reworking the painting.
Obviously with the diverse amount of feedback in this thread, I will definitely not be able to satisfy everyone.
But, I will be able to at least address technical flaws and get some things out of the way.
I've identified some issues that I'll be working on, thanks to some of you guys:
-In atmospheric perspective, objects closer to you are darker in value, and objects farther away are lighter. I did this correctly with the city in the background, the Hanging Gardens in the middle ground and the plants in the foreground, but I failed to make the people in the foreground dark enough, and they have a contrasting value as a result.
-I will tone down the magenta in the sunset. I'll likely swap it for orange or something else though. The problem is, rendering sunsets are almost all about color saturation instead of value.
But I'll solve that to the best of my ability.
-The addition of more shadows to make it a more convincing space. Shadows are a very, very weak point of mine, so I should get the practice in.
-More color unity across the composition.
I applied two overlays over the top half to make it warm and the bottom half was meant to be cooler in temperature to achieve contrast.
I need to figure out how to unify the color though without violating the rules of color temperature in art though.
About other concerns like the grandeur of the piece:
I drew a lot of inspiration from the screens in Civilization V.
As much crap as I tend to give that game for its unprofessional Civilopedia and gross imbalance between the civilizations on a tiering scale, it has the best art in the series.
There are a lot of life scenes represented in that game that don't necessarily speak out about the grandeur of civilization,
but rather display the multifaceted nature of civilization. Some of you guys don't think it's grand enough, and I understand that opinion.
But think of it like this. If I do a series, this composition may be intense and passionate, but I've covered that niche, and the other ones could have different moods to them.
This Babylon one may be passionate, but say I do a Paris one that has a dreamlike quality or a somber London piece, I'd have covered a spectrum.
I want to depict a range for civilization and show all aspects, but this may take multiple pieces.
The dawn or morning thing does not strike me as a necessity. Our current DoC loading screen is a sunset as well, I should mention.
Lastly, I will understand if Leoreth does not want to make this the official loading screen of the mod, however, per both Charriu and my concerns,
I still would like to address that we shouldn't use Raphael Lacoste's Sunset on Babylon for the ethical reasons we touched on earlier.
Again, I have to thank you all as your input was highly constructive.
