Hey zweck I've been meaning to crit this for a while. I wrote like 2 crits then scrapped them, and did half an edit then scrapped it.
- The eyes ARE too far up. It's not subjective, I measured the pixels. 35 from the top of the head to the middle of the pupil. Then, 35 pixels only gets from the middle of the pupil to just below the lower lip. The top of the head needs to be enlarged, or the eyes moved down. This is by far the biggest hindrance on the piece.
- The way you are texturing the skin makes it look a lot like clay. You have many fine little groups of pixels suggesting a sort of bumpy uneven texture, but skin isn't like that, not even weatherbeaten rough skin. Also, there is a very homogeneous ramp from the shadows to the highlights, with very even steps between the darkest shadow to the highlight. This is adding the to clay feel, because skin isn't like that. Skin always has oil on it, which reflects quite strongly when hit directly by light, and the parts not directly hit by strong light act differently then having a straight ramp into more and more desaturated and darker colors. Someone on this board said that a lot of skin shadows are more highly saturated then some of the lighted parts. I can't really describe to you how skin acts under light exactly, first because I don't understand it thoroughly, second because I don't think there is a formula for it really. Just avoid straight ramps, and use highlights to indicate the oily and wet nature of skin.
- The mouth is way too straight, like someone cut his face open with a scalpel. Lips, even tight ones, don't have such a perfect shape and to see these straight lines in the middle of the face is a little jarring. Also, lips are wet! use highlights to convey this.
- The beard... I am not good enough at doing hair to help you out here beyond saying it doesn't look right. The clumps are too uniform in size, and there is too much pixel noise. It makes it look like steel wool, or sandpaper or something.
- The strenocledomastoid is much thicker then you have drawn it, and changes thickness throughout. Thicken it up especially at the top.
Anyway, if you look at the right (our right) eye and that section of the nose, it is well done. The pixel clusters are large and meaningful, it looks very 3D like it should.
Sorry for the lack of edit, but I was getting frustrated because I couldn't really edit this very easily, with all the small bits of pixel blending things together. I'd have to just draw over everything, and i don't feel like doing that. I was kind of hoping someone with more skill would come in and do something like that *cough*eyecraft*cough*. He did that for my Helm copy and it helped me immensely.