After school tea time

I'm not a fan of K-on, and actually, I'm not a fan of any title for that matter, so this critique is biased by the fact that I'm more into original art. However, I did do a quick Google Images search to compare this with its fan-based title.

Vision: I'm aware of what this means to teens here in Bangkok, and perhaps this had some influence on why you decided to start this piece. Teens love bands... they worship them. I've seen it in my own school where they allow bands to play during school hours -- in school (pisses me right off too)! So although you had a very good idea of what you wanted to achieve, I'm not sure you've achieved that to its effect here, at least not entirely.

Originality: It's a fan-art. How original can you get? Granted, I see you've applied your own style to the original characters, but really, I look forward to seeing your own original characters on stage, so to speak.

Technique: Your technique is constantly improving, though I've seen bigger improvements from you in your past work : P Keep it up though! I especially noted how your perspective is more refined in this piece, and how you're doing better with these dynamic angles. However, you've missed out on some crucial lighting techniques that would have really brought this composition to life.

Impact: As mentioned, you didn't quite achieve the impact I thought you might with this, mainly due to a missed opportunity to use lighting to your advantage. Other things as well. Let's look at what's missing:

• Solar Flares. You know how people over-use them in Photoshop so much that it sucks? Well, here it would actually work. It's a hot day -- band performing with the sun shinning behind them -- or at least it would have been more dramatic that way.

• Sweat. It's a hot day -- or is it? Probably not, but viewers might connect better to this piece if there were the tell-tale signs of what they might see if they were in the picture: the performers sweating, powerful but obviously spent because they're giving a good performance. I just don't 'feel' the power being delivered on stage because they all seem so relaxed and Rexona-like fresh.

• Extreme highlights: If those are metal mics on metal stands, I'd expect more extreme light reflections off of them. This kind that becomes a blinding white light. Same as the cymbals and other metallic things on stage. I just really don't feel the presence of the sun in this composition -- perhaps it's the cloudy sky doing it, but the sun hitting the buildings tell me otherwise.

On the other hand, I like the girl jumping off stage and the other one using her iPhone to get a panty-shot. : P But because these are 'extras', they aren't enough to bring up the impact.

Overall comment: It's great, it must have took a LOT of technical layout and quite meticulous compositing -- but the absence of light and emotion kills the impact quite a lot. The good point is that these additional lighting effects can be applied on an entirely new layer -- so they can be added on whenever, without needing to change the original composition, and that would definitely be an improvement.