Iām not terribly familiar with the Noob models, mostly stick to the PonyXL variants myself. Iām also by no means an artist so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Overall the image is pretty good, like you said if a little stale and bland. My impressions below.
Is white and red a bad color combination with Cadanceās fur? Is the color grading okay? (difficult because I and many people do not have color accurate monitors)
- Iām fine with the red and white Cadance is wearing but what I think gets to me is Cadance is a little oversaturated. She somewhat harshly sticks out with the rest of the image (which is more painterly and muted) and I think that saturation is causing some artifacts particularly around the gold plate sheās wearing.
- Another thing I noticed was that the doorway seems itself split in half with the line being covered up by Cadance herself. So one half of the door appears to be one style while the other half (Cadanceās left) has a mirror image but slightly different. On that same side, thereās a sort of knob/handle type thing just jutting out of the wall. Whatās it for? The poster on the left (viewerās pov) may make sense.
What do people think of the face? I feel like it has a somewhat porcine influence to it and Iām not sure if I like it.
- Iād agree and I think itās largely due to the nostrils/first person POV. From what Iāve noticed with my admittedly limited artistic talent is that pony faces when facing āforwardā tend to point up slightly. Cadanceās muzzle is definitely pointing down but the face could be fixed with an inpaint or adetailer model.