Love the value hierarchy and the mood, and how well the material finish reads on the black king, super cool.
Two things jumped out as breaking the immersion for me somewhat: first, the long specular highlight down the middle feels like an edge somehow. First I thought it might be that the line isn't sharp, and the gray streak behind the highlight reads like an angle break, but now I'm wondering if maybe your scene was set up way more to your left than the final framing suggests?
The right edge of the highlight hitting the eye dead on puts the light source right behind the viewer if the cross-section is to be round, on one hand. But then the left hand side would be reflecting way wide, without ever hitting the eye, so the whole highlight reads like a flat facet, which in turn makes the right half read like it's at a sharp angle to the left. Maybe. Really not sure, what do you think?
Overall, I would use the two lowermost horizontal highlights as the source of truth, since those read great, and then pull the rest over to have the same centerline.
The other bit that jumped out was that the cast shadows on the wall read like both pieces are simultaneously next to it. If the bottom specular highlight on the black king is the source of truth, then the light is almost 90 degrees to the left (specular = mirror, angle of reflection is the angle of incidence), so I think the black piece would be casting a shadow onto the white one, not onto the wall (the shadow cast by the nearmost part of the white piece seems to match the highlight perfectly).
It could be simply that your setup had two light sources of course (oh.. come to think of it that would explain the specular as well?), but I think in that case the wall still needs to be basically touching both pieces at once in order for the shadow to be almost the same size as the pieces, and at the same distance from both.
Finally, a super minor nitpick: there is a bit of a halo around both pieces. The one on the left side of the black piece is kind of great, it reads a bit like subsurface scattering through the lacquer finish, and it might be fun to lean into that and just break the line a little on the downward-facing surfaces. The one along the right edge does jump out a bit for me (and omg I know how annoying it can be to get rid of those.. I sharpen a 2B into a needle and spend half an hour lightly layering over the gap, while hoping I don't forget to re-sharpen every 5 minutes).
Sorry about the novel lol, and it's a really cool piece the way it is, just thought that clarifying the lighting a bit could help add to the impact. Hope some of this helps!
Two things jumped out as breaking the immersion for me somewhat: first, the long specular highlight down the middle feels like an edge somehow. First I thought it might be that the line isn't sharp, and the gray streak behind the highlight reads like an angle break, but now I'm wondering if maybe your scene was set up way more to your left than the final framing suggests?
The right edge of the highlight hitting the eye dead on puts the light source right behind the viewer if the cross-section is to be round, on one hand. But then the left hand side would be reflecting way wide, without ever hitting the eye, so the whole highlight reads like a flat facet, which in turn makes the right half read like it's at a sharp angle to the left. Maybe. Really not sure, what do you think?
Overall, I would use the two lowermost horizontal highlights as the source of truth, since those read great, and then pull the rest over to have the same centerline.
The other bit that jumped out was that the cast shadows on the wall read like both pieces are simultaneously next to it. If the bottom specular highlight on the black king is the source of truth, then the light is almost 90 degrees to the left (specular = mirror, angle of reflection is the angle of incidence), so I think the black piece would be casting a shadow onto the white one, not onto the wall (the shadow cast by the nearmost part of the white piece seems to match the highlight perfectly).
It could be simply that your setup had two light sources of course (oh.. come to think of it that would explain the specular as well?), but I think in that case the wall still needs to be basically touching both pieces at once in order for the shadow to be almost the same size as the pieces, and at the same distance from both.
Finally, a super minor nitpick: there is a bit of a halo around both pieces. The one on the left side of the black piece is kind of great, it reads a bit like subsurface scattering through the lacquer finish, and it might be fun to lean into that and just break the line a little on the downward-facing surfaces. The one along the right edge does jump out a bit for me (and omg I know how annoying it can be to get rid of those.. I sharpen a 2B into a needle and spend half an hour lightly layering over the gap, while hoping I don't forget to re-sharpen every 5 minutes).
Sorry about the novel lol, and it's a really cool piece the way it is, just thought that clarifying the lighting a bit could help add to the impact. Hope some of this helps!