Pawige: i'm familiar with Ron Lemen's lesson about skin tones, and with the basic "physics" going on and under the skin. You can see i've given the part that receives the most light a yellowed tone (a tone caucasian skin has, because of underlaying fat) and lower saturation caused by the direct light, and the midtones and dark shades are tinted towards red from light scattering under the surface and shining on blood and muscles under the skin layer.
Having said this, i don't think your edits are "realistic" at all, they head more towards a cartoon look. The first edit comes close, the lighter color conveys a good tanned feel, but not even red skinned people look like this (only if the lightsource was a setting sun). On the blue tintings on the darkest part, i assume these are secondary lightsources, they do bump up the other colors but in my original i was going for just one lightsource (i'll do more once i fell i have this thing under control). The second and third edits just feel totally off.
It's interesting that after looking at your edits, the lighter color i've used looks like a green, didn't look like that before.
Thanks for the critics.

Why wouldn't you "resort" to dithering?

I don't want to be limited to a single technique, i want options.

Had a crack at Turbo's Lineart.

I'm diggin' da lumps . Really nice texture (must be a bit of a pain to texture that lumpy pattern individually). The colors are nice too, i get some "magic/fantasy" vibes from this blueish green. I love how the belly skin's texture looks altogether different from the rest of the body, the shininess of the surface. That twist on the lower half looks kind of odd... perhaps making the curve of the brighter skin part more pronounced would make it better? Also, adding some shadows cast from the arms of head on the torso would give it more depth. Those spots on the tail shading are nice too, but suggest a smoother texture, different than the one at the top (just a nitpick really).

I worked on this a bit more:
...
I'm still not sure how the light would fall on the bottom tail. I think when I figure that out it'll look better.

The scales' highlights add more depth, looking better, and the shading has improved. As Faktablad suggested, you could now start suggesting more volume, by making larger highlights where light strikes the surface with greater intensity, and smaller and smaller as it fades (fading near the edges of the body). Look at an orange, or think of a cilinder. The upper and middle torso would benefit this most, for they are the bulkier parts of the lizzard thing. I like your colors, but you could afterwards play with their saturations a bit and make a few hue shifts (make the highlights less saturated, shift the dark tones towards purple, or blue, etc), just for the fun of it

On the tail, you could just add some shading on the bottom and no highlights, or you could add a secondary light source, shining from below.

Did a little edit. In the meanwhile, you got lots of useful replies, heh...



This work is looking good, i like the shading and the face and hair. It's moving in a great direction, should look great in the end. I specially like how it has a few anime subtones while freeing itself from the "anime look" template, personally i'm tired of that worn look (SF concept art was always somewhat far from that, and i loved it).
The main thing i did was fix the shoulder length. I added some lines for muscle form and definition, but they're just my interpretation, hope they're not so messy that you can't make it out.


Oh yeah, and basically what baccaman said is the basic thing you'll have to do anytime to get consistent looking anatomy, not wonky one. And going back and redoing wrong stuff from the start is what separates a mature artist from one who has yet to reach that point... (something i've only relatively recently come to have a grasp on)

and the tiles>>

HOLY that's sweet! Teh colors rule! And bricks! Me like

A larger tileset (using 2 or more tiles for each element like doors and windows) allows for more detail, but limits the variety you can introduce with the tileset. The majority of people seem more inclined into doing that apparently... I'm noticing that everyone's picking just a couple of elements from the picture, like the signs and doors/windows, and forgetting the general look of the street (i don't see any bricked walls on these buildings except on the corners, yet most everyone's going that way. And doing night shots and stuff).

Just a rant.