[Feedback] Girl with pandas

[Zanorin]

Hey all, a friend recently asked me to pixel her surrounded by pandas. Since it's like a "gift" I want it to look really nice.

Haven't done the background yet, I'd like to know if it looks good so far, and what could be corrected / improved.

Thanks in advance !

[eriophora]

You might want to try using a reference to get the foot/leg positioning correct. The first thing that sticks out to me is that the top of her foot should be flat to the floor rather than perpendicular to it - that looks very uncomfortable there!

[Zanorin]

Thanks eriophora, the foot was indeed done in a hurry and then forgotten about 
I made an edit but I feel like I've made it worse somehow xD

[eishiya]

The breasts seem to be trying to escape to the right side of the image xP I think you might need to shift them over to the left a bit.

[MysteryMeat]

Honestly the biggest problem I'm seeing here is the arms. They're pretty gimpy, redraw those and tweak the head/neck to fit that torso better and it'll pass snuff!

[Zanorin]

I made a small edit that re-centers and the breasts, and lowers the head on the shoulders, maybe the change is too subtle ? One information I forgot to mention is the character should be a bit chubby, so maybe that explains part of her anatomy ? Probably not, but I thought it might be useful to mention it :')

@MysteryMeat I don't really see what you mean with the arms, could you be more specific as to why you don't like them ?

[MysteryMeat]

In a nutshell, they're A: too skinny to sell the chubby angle, and B: not nearly long enough. In addition, she seems to be lacking an elbow!

It's way more apparent in her camera-left arm, take a look at this picture for a better idea on how to proportion it better:

[Zanorin]

Is this better ?

(I also tried another colour for her shirt, to try and "warm up" my picture, does it look nice ?)

[MysteryMeat]

Quite a bit, yes! Lengthen the forearm by another two pixels though i think

[Zanorin]

I kinda find it too long now though to be honest   

[MysteryMeat]

I guarantee it's not. It can be a bit funky trying to wrap your head around proportions sometimes, a good shorthand to remember is that arms are about proportional to the legs.

Another thing that helps is to make sure that, when pictured as fully extended, the tips of the fingers stop just about halfway down the thigh!

[Zanorin]

Another thing that helps is to make sure that, when pictured as fully extended, the tips of the fingers stop just about halfway down the thigh!

Yep, started doing that very recently and boy it helps a lot !

Thanks for all the nice shutterstock people xD

[MysteryMeat]

Nary a worry lass/lad, shutterstock is a lifeline of great ref photos for whatever weird thing you need and several hundreds you absolutely do not.

Always fun to boot it up and go exploring to see what weird-ass nonsense they've got for the week!

[Zanorin]

That looks like Kevin Malone from The Office, makes it even creepier...

Anyways, I started doing a background, but I absolutely suck at backgrounds, so I need some help

How do I texture the rug to make it less ... flat ? Is my pavement alright ? how do I end the rug ? ToT

[MysteryMeat]

I'd suggest some simple noise to emulate strands of fabric sticking up, or alternatively a sort of scattered weave pattern to give the impression of subtle detail.

Try to keep that limited though, don't try to draw every individual bit since you'll wind up too detailed for the cartoony look. Instead, do it sort of like how they draw the bricks in this picture:



What they've done here is limit the use of the brick pattern so they can IMPLY that the whole thing is brick without having to draw each individual brick in that wall. It's a handy trick for cartoonier styles like yours!

[Zanorin]

I've been trying to get my weave/wooly pattern for 30 minutes and this is the best I've been able to do, how do I get a fu***** wooly pattern that's so small ? xD

[eriophora]

It might help to make the edges of the rug thicker and put a shadow under them near the wood floor. The little wrinkle is a prime place to do this, too! Right now, the rug appears extremely thin, and the easiest way to change that is by increasing the depth of the edges.

[eishiya]

At this size, a woven texture will just look smooth. You can suggest a slight texture by giving your shadows a textured edge, e.g.

[Zanorin]

I tried to apply what you both said, how about this ?

I'm still struggling with how to "end" the top of my rug/floor though : do I end it like a perfectly horizontal line ? Like a curve ?

[eishiya]

For a woven texture, try making the little texture lines horizontal instead of vertical. Vertical lines suggest fibres sticking out of the rug.

Depends on the perspective of the scene. The back edges should probably be slightly more horizontal than the corresponding front edges.
Or make the whole thing round and draw it as an ellipse, but that means redrawing the parts you've already drawn.

I recommend blocking in the entire scene before you make these decisions.

[Zanorin]

Fibers sticking out was what I was going for now, since I suck at woven texture and since you suggested that neat shadow trick, it made more sense to me to make the whole rug follow that idea.

I didn't really give perspective any thought in the beginning, I guess I was just going for a rug placed "diagonally" on top of the floor...

The back edges should probably be slightly more horizontal than the corresponding front edges.

Can't really picture this, what do you mean ? Sorry I'm stupid 

I recommend blocking in the entire scene before you make these decisions.

Also didn't get that, what do you mean by "blocking out" ?

[eishiya]

By "blocking out" I mean roughly sketching in the entire composition. No details, the perspective and such don't need to be right, it's just something to help you plan the piece. "Blocking out" usually implies using solid blobs of colour, but sketching it out with lines can work too. Making sure your entire image works as a whole before you put all this detail work into it makes it a lot easier to end up with a cohesive artwork without having to redo chunks of it.

As for the back and front edges, here's a quick sketch of a rectangular rug in perspective, with the opposing front and back edges put next to each other so you can compare their angles:

The back angles look a bit more horizontal as a consequence of perspective. So, even if you don't want to plan out the perspective in detail, you can still get a decent result just by making the far edges more horizontal than the near edges.

[Zanorin]

Thank you for the explanations Here is the latest version :

Does it look weird or is it ok ?

[eishiya]

The perspective doesn't immediately stand out as bad to me. I think the composition's weak, as a result of you starting with the character and not sketching in the rest of the scene. What are you going for with the background? Are you sure the character should be in the middle? Are you sure you need that much background?

It looks like you copied the shape of shadow from my texture example. That's fine since you did plenty of your own work on it, but consider if that shape and size benefits your piece. It doesn't correspond to the shape of the character, but it's also not very minimal, and it doesn't correspond to the light direction on the torso.

When characters sit like that, there are folds between the crotch and thighs. Check out the refs posted earlier in the thread, they should help. Even when a character is naked, there's a dip/fold there. Clothing just means even more folds.

The outline on the rug doesn't look good to me because it's lighter than the brown. Outlines should be darker than the colours they're separating. Otherwise, they read as blending/blurring/glow instead. If a dark outline makes that part of the image stand out too much, consider not having an outline at all.

You have perspective on the carpet, but not on the flooring, which makes the planks look like they get larger the further away they are.

[Zanorin]

Tried making the shadow more "realistic", added crotch/thigh folds, made the woodplanks in the back thinner and those in the front thicker, darkened the rug outline (maybe it's still to light ?).  I've still got a problem with this however :

What are you going for with the background? Are you sure the character should be in the middle? Are you sure you need that much background?

It's embarrassing because I didn't really think about all this beforehand (this was my first attempt at a background), I just wanted my image to have some background to give my characters some more "life" and an environment to sit in. What would you suggest I do if I want to keep my background, but make the composition less boring ?

Edit: I had uploaded the wrong version  should be okay now.

[Zanorin]

Small edit, I tried to justify the background size by putting my characters more to the left and adding a fifth retarded panda on the foreground, made sense to me at the time, does it actually make sense ?