[C+C] Introduction + my works so far!

[Willabee]

I'm open to constructive (and preferably kind) criticism... but I'm not a fan of harsh or stoney criticism. Give me a pillow, dammit!!!!
Anyway... In all seriousness, I used to futz about with pixel art before I had access to the internet and could learn such wonderful things I didn't realize were legitimate art forms. At the time I worked with simple geometry to make what would have been used for avatars. To be honest, I didn't even know what an avatar was at the time, I just liked making heads out of pixels ^u^ (sadly I don't have them anymore...)
That aside, though, I stopped working with pixels for a long time, and recently just... boom... I decided to try it again and I'm getting into it quite nicely! And now with the wonders of the internet (and a more focussed adult mind), I'm actually doing something with it!!!! Though I'm not sure what level I'm at right now. I'd like to imagine I'm slightly above mediocre... but that's unlikely. So anything constructive would be greatly appreciated

The first finished pixel work was a very basic lady in pink in a 32x32 square. This is pretty much a rip-off practice of something I saw in a tutorial video (to which I do not have a link). Though the tutorial was for a robed wizard in purple holding a staff with a glowing green gem. ... I just followed a similar principle for practice. It's still neat in my opinion! But I'd like your thoughts on what I could/should have done differently.


The next was just a cute little squirrel that happened on accident. For the record, most of my stuff will start as accidents.


My next finished work (which I think still needs help with shading, but it's one of my best shaded ones so far in my opinion) is a mushroom! It's actually based on a drawing I did. I sketched it, scanned it and colored it in my computer. The original is from April 2014, but the pixel version was made like a week ago. I started out tracing over a minimized version, but then I tweaked it to make it more ... mushroomy?
I'm may or may not edit this further, but I will say that I know i need to work on using shading to express the depth of the pockets in the umbrella... I also probably should have used that tan color to outline the pocket on the top instead of using red...


After that I got fancy and decided to try taking inspiration from a work I admire. There is a band I love called The Moon and the Nightspirit, and I am in love with the album art for their album Rego Rejtem. I tried translating a portion of it into pixels! I did not trace; I put them side-by-side and drew it from scratch. In any case, if you're interested in a reference, search google.


And my latest image is of a dragon... or a pterodactyl (you decide) resting on a rock. ... Again it started as an accident, but if it means anything to you, the end product hardly incorporates the accident that started the whole journey. I will admit right now (as I'm sure you can tell) I have absolutely no idea how to shade rocks. ... ... So you're left with that fancy mess. At least it doesn't look half bad in my own opinion! Then again, all I did was speckle while keeping in mind to highlight and shade lumps. If anyone has some suggestions on improving stone... I would be VERY grateful for such information. Though I'd like to imagine my clouds are pretty spot on ^u^ They were last minute filler, but i really liked the way they came out


~
All that aside, this is my first post and I haven't seen anywhere to intro (admittedly I haven't looked very hard yet), so hi! I'm Willabee. I'm 21, a guy, I live with my bf and his mother; I've been making art-ish things for as long as I can remember, and I'd like to make them my career in one way or another. I've never had decent lessons in making any kind of art, so though I've done it for years, i feel like my skills are still very suck. I've only JUST discovered the power of researching art techniques on the internet, and I'm very excited to see what i can learn.

Also for the record, if this post seems jumbled or if the grammar is too off for your liking; it's midnight thirty right now and had soda about 3 hours ago... a decision I regret... though it tasted so good.

[lachrymose]

Kinda hard to critique so much at once. In the future, it would be best to post more focused threads for critique. 

Some common themes I’m seeing are a lot of single pixel noise mixed in with a lot more colours used than really necessary.
A lot of banding going on in the album piece, among other things.

My suggestion is to do some reading.
(just going to post full links)
http://cyangmou.deviantart.com/art/Pixel-Art-Process-413418385
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

[Willabee]

Kinda hard to critique so much at once. In the future, it would be best to post more focused threads for critique. 

Some common themes I’m seeing are a lot of single pixel noise mixed in with a lot more colours used than really necessary.
A lot of banding going on in the album piece, among other things.

Yah, this was just my first post so and I didn't have (in my mind) too much work, so i thought I could get away with just posting it all O_O

With colored areas, I usually stick to 4 or 5 shades. That's what most of the tutorials I've read suggested. Highlight, base, shade and either outline or darker shade for extra definition. Thank you for your input, though! I'm wondering what you would suggest to improve that. I get frustrated when i can't create the depth I want, so I always feel the need to go darker.

And the banding with the album cover. If you mean in the haid, that's (more or less) the way I saw it in the original. Maybe i just didn't translate it well? For the most part, the hair was laid in bands like that and that was my first attempt at long  hair. Do you have any suggestions for how I could improve it? I was reading one of the tutorials you sent, and I think I understand what you mean no. Though I still feel like I needed that extra shading for depth... It didn't look right to me without it. Which is probably a sign I was doing something wrong!

~O~ You have no obligation to, of course.

And thanks for the links I'll give them a look.

~~For the record, now that I've read through them, the tutorial on Pixel Joint was extremely helpful. Thank you! It'll take a while for everything to seep in, but we'll see what wonders come of it.

[cels]

Made a very quick and shoddy edit just to illustrate a few points:

1) It's important to take any complex object and divide it into simple shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc) in order to understand how it reflects lights and casts shadows. And make sure to apply the same light source to every shape (which I didn't do very well here, but it's still important) I'm not saying every mushroom has to be spherical (!), I'm just saying that you apply light and shadows to near-spherical objects almost like you do to spherical objects.

2) It's good to use different hues to shade objects. Dark sides have colder colours, bright sides have warmer colours.

3) It's great when you can use the same colours for different colour ramps, it really ties the whole piece together

4) Don't be afraid of applying too much contrast when you're starting out. Almost everyone make the mistake of having too little contrast when they start.

My edit isn't the best example of the points above, but I hope it's better than nothing.

[Willabee]

Made a very quick and shoddy edit just to illustrate a few points:

O! Thanks, Cels I've been doing "art" since I was a kid, but I've never had proper lessons or looked into anything. It's a passion, but for the greater majority of my life I've been ignorant to the actual learning part -_- And now at 21 I'm sort of paying for that, I guess. But I want to get into actually learning. And this is really helpful! Thank you I'll try to re-apply those principles to the original and see if anything magical happens.

Also! I just noticed that there's a small band of bright at the bottom ridge of the umbrella... is there any reason for that or was that part of putting it together fast?

[Willabee]

So I have a feeling I made it look worse, perhaps? But I took Cels' advice on colors and shading (or at least tried to) and tried to use dithering to work smarter with fewer colors (and because I'm learning to like the textured effect it tends to give). For the record, I'm trying to make the cap look a little lumpy which is why the shading isn't in solid lines... but I'm curious of your thoughts. Is this any better? What do you think I could do to improve it?

Also the light source isn't supposed to be top left, it's more like... top half-left... in case that needed clarification.

[Night]

snip

Not to detract from your post, but this is not the way shadow works, shadow is the obstruction of light, therefore, the remaining cylinder shading shown in your edit would not exist because light does not reach that area (in theory anyway, it's more complex than that).

Reflection and shadow scattering/position&distance of light has a lot to do with the shadow cast and how it appears.
In nature, due to these reasons, you would expect to actually see the closet part of the object with shadow cast upon it to be lighter than the furthest part of the object with shadow cast upon it, but not to the same extent as you've shown it - which would lead you to believe that the highlight continues even despite the shadow, and just gets darker from it.

[cels]

@Night: I don't mind at all, I'm happy to learn or be corrected when I provide poor advice!

Isn't this mostly a question of contrast, the amount of ambient lighting and the strength of the light source? If a single ray of sunlight hits a mushroom in a cave, then there's going to be a lot of contrast and no sunlight would hit the area directly under the mushroom 'cap'. The areas covered by shadow would read as fairly flat, right? But in a forest where mushrooms grow under trees and there is no direct sunlight - but lots of ambient lighting, as the light is reflected from all around - there is less contrast and the cylinder shape would be easier to see, even in the shadow of the 'cap'. Right?

[Night]

I'm not infallible and could make mistakes, so do take the time to explore this yourself if it interests you. 

Generally yes, but not exactly, lots of things come into play with how we perceive light, such as: what you've mentioned, the size of the light source, the size of the object, the environment around it, etc.

If we were to put an object in the sky with no surface underneath it or around it to reflect light unto that object (space basically); then yes, there would be a flat black shadow. In retrospect, if we put a mushroom into a cave, with a single beam of light hitting it there would still be some light scattered even under the cap because of the light being reflected from the ground of the cave under the cap (assuming the cave's ground is relatively straight), if the mushroom isn't directly under the light then it's a different deal.
My previous edit/example took into account light scattered around it (not the white background of course, otherwise it'd look a lot different, but some kind of made up environment).

With the forest scenario - yes, definitely.

I've heard of the term ambient light, but I'm not exactly sure as to what it means (the only reason I've even heard of it is because of 3D modelling, and even then my definition of it would be like "something that makes the shadow lighter"); I did do a quick search though and I think I know what you mean (something like a main/world light?). It wouldn't be terribly important because I think we're on the same page as to what ambient lighting means, but could you explain what it is to me?