Rinoa Heartilly of Final Fantasy VIII

Comments: This is a depiction of Rinoa as the Sorceress, with translucent wings and standing in front of the field of flowers beside Edea's home.

Director Comments: Rinoa certainly seems to have become a popular character around here lately. You've done some very nice work with this drawing, and I have a couple suggestions about shading.
When you pencil-shade something, you have to take the brightness levels into account. Generally, you want to have at least one area of extreme white and one area of extreme black. (Mind you, this is not a rule. Art has no rules, and as soon as it picks one up, someone is quick to break it. It's just a general suggestion to work off.) Now, this image has both of those, but the midtones are, overall, very light. This causes the black tones to stand out. (If the overall image had been very dark, the whites would have stood out more.)
Here's good technique to see how much something stands out and becomes a focal point - either squint or unfocus your eyes, or even use photoshop to blur your image. You will see that the black shapes at the top of Rinoa's outfit and around her upper legs stand out quite a bit. This basically brings them out as the most noticeable part of the drawing. This can be effective, but these parts may not have been what you wanted to emphasize.
Typically, the face is a good target for the higher contrast stuff. To make Rinoa really stand out powerfully, I suggest darkening her hair a bit and lightening the other black parts, to the point that her hair is the darkest part of the image. This will create a high-contrast area framing her face. Moreso, you could leave the background mountains and terrain as it is, very light and low-contrast, and then go in and add more contrast to the rest of her body. You can do this by giving her a thicker outline, or darkening the shadow areas, like under her flapping trenchcoat-ish thing. Remember that the objects with higher contrast will stand out against everything else, and that the extreme blacks and whites will become focal points, so they should be placed strategically. Basically, all this stuff will make Rinoa feel closer to the viewer, with the background falling away, and giving a sense of depth. You've done a good job with the drawing; I suggest going in and making some changes with this info in mind, and see what you think of the new result.