Dungeon Delve Challenge Sketches

I've been wandering through the sketches for the Dungeon Delve challenge, 97 pages when I last checked. Amazing! I'd like to throw out a big "thank you" to those members of the community that have waded in and given constructive feedback. While I have tried to stay involved, the shear amount of entries and all the travel I've been up to have hampered my ability to get as involved as I would like. I'd like to toss out a few thoughts while everyone is gearing up for the final stage. Remember the brief. I've made a number of comments about the balance between character and environment. If you reread the brief, pay attention to the phrase "I'm looking for a piece that captures the concept of being lost in dangerous territory." For me, it's tough to capture the concept of being "lost" when I have a close-up of the character. So it you are stuggling with the concept of "lost" pull back and show some more of the environment. Push the perspective or pov. Take a cue from the thriller and horror genre, pushing yout perspective or pov can really create a sense of drama and tension. 
Like the overall narrative in your piece, but feel it is a little pedestrian, tilt your horizon line or get the image off eye-level. Think about your palette! Your underground, sure. But that doesn't mean that everything has to be complete blackness. There are all sorts of natural bio-luminescence in caves. Help add a little drama and color to you scene by taking some cues from nature. Remember that highlights are warm, and shadows are cool. Add some sophistication to you color scheme by modeling with warm and cool, not black and white. It's all about the composition. You can have a great environment, an amazing character, cool perspectives like on www.cartoon-coloring-page.com or pov, and if you composition sucks, the whole thing falls apart. Make sure you spend a little time looking over your composition. Cover elements and see if they are adding to the composition or detracting from it. Simplify your narrative and tell your story with just the right amount of elements. It's a whole lot easier to create a strong composition when you aren't trying to include the kitchen sink.

Hypothetical Situation

Okay. So, let’s say that, a lifetime ago, you ran a... hotdog stand. And you had, oh, I don’t know, 6 or 7 business partners. You break with them for the usual reasons, somebody was stealing the saurkraut, somebody was trying to pass off tofu dogs as all beef, someone stuck their wiener in the water, whatever... and then, like 20 or 30 years later, you find that one of the guys you started the hotdog stand with, who you always liked, is still in business with, uh, others operating the hotdog stand... who are not bad people mind you, but with whom you have found with absolute finality that you cannot interact on any level… but you want to tell the first guy about this new hotdog recipe you’re working on. But you definitely don’t want to get emails or commentary or anything from these other guys… and you sure as hell do not want them to get their stinking hands on your new hotdog recipe... So do you just write your old pal off as being dumber than a post for still hanging around with those wieners? Or do you trust him to honor a “mum’s the word”? Or is it all simply a sign that you are putting off doing more important things, like shaving?