Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: samw3 on August 29, 2009, 12:55:50 am

Title: Dragon Baddie
Post by: samw3 on August 29, 2009, 12:55:50 am
Here's a dragon baddie for our game.  Probably won't have anytime to edit this one, since I've already poured 10hrs into it, but any comments and critiques are still welcome.  I really do appreciate them and they have been helping me grow as a pixeler, I believe.

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/357882/minima/dragon5.png)
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: redballoon on August 29, 2009, 06:47:01 am
Yeah, it's fine but there's not enough contrast between light and dark for my liking rendering the image a bit flat - the head just gets a bit lost. The eyes and teeth the same colour as the body just don't do it any favours.

It's a good start but just needs that wee bit extra to make it a bit more special.
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: Dr D on August 29, 2009, 02:22:06 pm
It looks pretty great, but pretty monochromatic, and nothing pops out at you, and something that the head, in my opinion, especially needs. (contrast will help this.)

About the monochromatism, it makes him look like a statue. Making his eyes and teeth white, or some different color, might bring him to life a little more. I also don't think a secondary color all-around would do any damage, either, but it is your design, so it is up to you.
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: Redshrike on August 29, 2009, 02:37:43 pm
There's some fantastic pixel work here, but just it needs some more contrast, and especially some highlights, to let the player actually be able to see and appreciate the skill put into this.  As it is, it looks much, much better zoomed in at 8x where I can see the technique than at 1x, where it looks rather flat.  Here's a (really) quick edit to add some highlights to the face.  Even with such a rough edit, I think it takes on a lot more depth.
(http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2383/dragonedit.png)
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: samw3 on August 30, 2009, 04:50:45 am
Everyone's encouragement is going to be the death of this project of mine ;)

Well, after hearing the talk about contrast and seeing Redshrike's edit, i decided to pour some more time into this adding the contrast.  Of course when I did that I began seeing a bunch of other stuff and put another 6hrs on this..  :o

So.. here's my 16hr dragon.

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/357882/minima/dragon9.png)

Still open for comments, but I doubt I'll put any more time towards this.
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: thedaemon on August 30, 2009, 08:47:49 pm
The head still doesn't seem to pop out enough as you would be expecting color wise. Perhaps some more saturation with his head. His claws also look puny and weak. A different background color would also help.
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: EyeCraft on August 31, 2009, 01:35:25 am
Hey, some good stuff in this piece. There's some great volume in the body, but the head is extremely flat and hard to read. I think this comes from mixing your highlights and shadows into eachother too much. I thought I'd play with an edit to see if I could get more pop to the head, and generally try to bring more menace to the creature:

(http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z212/gastrop0d/edits/dragon9_ed.png)

Wings, head, neck and claws.
Title: Re: Dragon Baddie
Post by: samw3 on August 31, 2009, 08:27:43 am
Gorgeous :)  I like what you did with the cheeks as well as the shadow under the neck.  I do struggle with a sense of depth in my art.  Thanks for the edit!  I learned a bunch.

I also took some notes and if I have time to spare, I'll try to work them in later.  But I've gotta move on to the next one.