Hello! A friend of mine ( ) referred me to your art and wanted me to offer some critique on you artwork after I listened to the audio recording of A Puppet To Her Fame on Youtube. I have some suggestions for you, just from what I noticed could be improved on. (I’m not very advanced, but I do know some tips and ideas~) I know this art is stylized and meant to be cartoony/vector, but I think it would look interesting with more blending and darker shading to make it more contrasted and dark because this is a really dark and twisted story. Also, the brightness by Vinyl's head wouldn't make her face shine like that… The stage light would shine on Octavia, and shroud Vinyl in more darkness because the shield on that stage light behind Vinyl’s head would outline the top of her head and make everything behind the stage light shield darker. Another good idea would be to draw the top stage lights on and shining onto Octavia to make her look like she’s glowing/ethereal/waiflike because by now she’s probably a ghost of her former self in a way. If I remember correctly, this scene during one of Octavia's concerts which could mean that other people would be there, and so the stage workers would turn on more lights to everyone could see Octavia, which would mean she would normally be center stage (so the curtains would be on both sides of Octavia…) Since it is from Vinyl’s perspective, Octavia probably wouldn’t be directly facing her, rather turned more towards the general audience, but she could be turning her head at Vinyl. (I could totally be remembering the wrong scene though; there is probably a scene where it is just Octavia in the auditorium alone playing/practicing and so the stage lights wouldn't all be on, and she probably would be facing Vinyl all the way. If that was what you were going for then ignore all my rambling up above )



Oh and cellos are usually played sitting in a chair because the way to find Middle C is by sitting because when you have a cello (that fits your height) your hand should be eye level. The Base is the one where you would stand to play since it’s so big(cellos, violins, bases, they all look the same except for size lol). (I took cello lessons some years ago). Since Octavia is being forced to play this, I would recommend Octavia be limper and "rag doll" like, except for the parts where the strings are holding her up. In order for her to be standing that tall and that straight, there would normally have to be strings everywhere on her to distribute her weight better; she has them on her limbs and main joints. Unless the strings have completely taken over her mind as well (which I think that happened in the very end, didn’t it? It’s been a while, haha~) she would probably be trying anything to get free from them especially if she sees Vinyl/recognizes her. The strings would also probably be causing bleeding and even tearing of muscle which would only add to the dark theme~



I think it’s a great artwork, and I think it would be much more powerful and dynamic with some more realism thrown in there, more detail, more shading/blending of the colors. You could even mute the colors more or saturate Octavia’s colors to make her stand out more. Digital art is no easy task to do, and you’ve done really well with it! The horrified expression on Vinyl is very powerful and made it the entire artwork that much more scary and sad at the same time! It's almost like a moment of pure betrayal/shock. The dead look in Octavia's eyes is well done (and hard to convey!) and jarring compared to her stiff. doll like smile... Normally Octavia is very polite anyways, but combine a "polite" smile with dead, broken eyes makes her look very creepy!



I hope this wasn’t too harsh; these were just some ideas you could use~ It would be cool if you did one of those “DA Improvement Memes” and see how much you’ve advanced over the year(s). (Wow this was a lot of writing, sorry! )