Duo

While the color pallet on this picture works well, drawing itself and the use of textures is disappointing.

The foreground character (Skyblade?) is solidly within a TFA style. I could see those lines being in an episode, which is both impressive and unfortunate. Since Skyblade fits so perfectly into TFA, Ashbringer’s helm looks wrong. TFA is flat and graphic. The rims on Ashbringer’s helm, as well as the shading and highlights, create entirely too much volume for this style. Normally, I’d be able to write off presenting a TFA character in "three dimensions" as a personal stylistic change but you made Skyblade perfectly TFA so I have to assume that Ashbringer is a mistake. Right now, I feel like I’m looking at two pictures accidentally set on top of each other. Skyblade flattens Ashbringer and Ashbringer makes Skyblade's flatteness look wrong.

In terms of color choices, I am impressed. Both characters have bright, warm colors that you tied together with a deep blue. It gives a nice atmosphere. The lighting adds to the chilly tone. I’m not a huge fan of solid black chunks, especially when the rest of the picture is well colored, but I understand that it’s a popular technique that lots of people enjoy.

The textures are very poorly used. In full view, it’s easy to see that there is one texture over everything because streaks go across wide chunks of the characters. Almost every line on Skyblade's chest continues onto his right (our left) shoulder. This completely flattens the characters. It’s not a fun, graphic, TFA flat either. It’s cheap and lazy.

Perhaps the most bothersome thing about this picture is its terrible silhouette. If you were to color in these characters, you’d end up with a spikey blob. These shapes and poses are nearly impossible to read. Furthermore, Ashbringer’s presence in this picture is entirely unnecessary. While Skyblade is boringly posed, he is also readable on his own. Ashbringer is the problem. We cannot see her face or her pose. Her character is not present in this picture at all. Ashbringer adds nothing to this picture but confusion. Her midsection adds weird shapes to what should have been a nice negative space between Skyblade’s side and arm.

In the future, you need to work on keeping a consistent style between characters. Plan your pictures beforehand so that every character you add actually matters or, if they don’t, leave them out. Make sure that your character’s silhouette is readable and only flatten things you want to be flattened.

I can’t help but mentally compare this to your other picture I critiqued. They are very similar. Flat blue background, glowing elements, lack of emotional cues for the viewer, etc. There’s nothing wrong with making similar pieces but neither one of these pieces really merits a whole picture. They’d both make lovely panels in a comic but they do not provide enough information or emotion to be stand alone pieces.

If you want to do more midrange/close up single images, I’d suggest picking a stronger emotion or theme so that the characters don’t come across as emotionally detached. Even if the character is supposed to be blank, they need to be portrayed in an interesting way.