Thank you for the critique, and the compliments!



Regarding the distracting elements, I had hoped I had managed to make them not so, but evidently I didn't get get it quite right. It's a fine balance with non-focus elements between being unnoticeable and being distracting. Hmm.

Not that I'm excusing it, but looking at the book cover guide, I tried to keep elements placed within their areas and have their own focuses. Although as a whole composition it's still no excuse. Although I'm not sure how I'd make the things that were necessary to be there to be less distracting...



The darkness was another difficult thing to balance. I wanted to keep the transition of dark to light for focusing on Rarity, but the darkness, especially on the far left, was something that was tweaked a lot. I also was worried that while it looked ok on my monitor, it might be too dark to others, in fact that same thing occurred with the commissioner. But it could be lighter, or make the griffons/pegasi more discernible, but again, the balance of noticeability. I shall try to address this in future.



The saturation of the big warship did have its own saturation transition, although it's hard to see, but I understand what you mean regarding the background. The clouds originally were just blues and purples, and normally this would be correct, and be nowhere near as saturated with colour as they are here. So I'd agree with you. These colours were result of random experimenting with overlay layers, and I liked them too much to change them, excusing it with "they're magically induced storm clouds, so magic!" and had hoped I had boosted Rarity and the ship enough to make it ok... If it wasn't fantasy, and if it wasn't MLP I'd totally agree with you. I mean, compositionally, I do agree, and will remember it for the future. But damn do I like those rainbow storm clouds.



Anyway, thank you again for taking the time to write a wonderful critique and for the compliments.