Can anyone give any critiques on this cloud CG? It's my latest one and I still think the picture's blurry. I tried to make the picture look a bit more clear but it seemed like I made it a lot worse... so I decided to stop there.

So if anyone has any idea how to make better clouds than this using Photoshop 7, I'd appreciate it.


(Edit: I noticed that many of the clouds are individual.)

Added: here's a new one. I've tried a different method.

http://alpha-shade.com/www/Tut/clouds.htm

Well, Kudos for realizing clouds have desaturated color and need shading in pure greys.

As people looking at sky from earth, perspective becomes very relevant and it seems you're ignoring this element entirely. I think it would be improved with a perspective distortion. The second attempt seems more realistic to me.

What is my personal technique? I regularly fucking cheat. I often cut and paste a real photo of a real sky into the space for such an element -if I can find one with a perspective that matches my intent.

Well, here's my third try.

...I think I'm still missing something.

The sky is too green.
The sky is too dark.
The clouds are too light.
I don't like the lens flare where you've used it.

The sky is too bright a colour, it looks unnatural and cartoony, in a bad way. Painful on the eyes. Because there's so much of it there doesn't need to be that intense of a colour. The edges of the clouds are too blurry, in real life clouds do seem like solid shapes. They are more "bitty" and varied in texture.

I hope that helps, they're nice clouds.

Those are good looking clouds.
But you should never use lens flares. Normally...
They were very abused and over used in the 90's. CG lens flares are a bit passé now. They’re only justified if your view is meant to be via a camera, telescope, or binoculars.
You’re best of not drawing the sun at all usually. People don’t tend to look at the sun much. Being the brightest object means that anything else you draw will have to be darker and that a pain.
The best way to draw the sun is to do a small, single colour radial gradient of white, or: do a circle selection, feather it (a lot) and then just fill it with white.

The best way to draw clouds is to get a photo and copy it. But you’re doing pretty well anyway.