A normal person is about 7-8 heads tall, but you can play with that all you want really. It just depends on what you're going for. Some chibi stuff is 2 heads tall, some realistic stuff if 8, there is no rule that says you have to use X number of heads.
For your first piece, this is pretty good. A few things to keep in mind:
- Don't just shade towards the "edges" of a shape, like you have done on his head, shirt, hair, everything. This is called pillow shading and it will always look terrible.
- Don't try to use a bunch of colors to make the transition smooth between shadow is light, it will make everything look doughy. If a shadow looks bad with just one color, then it's going to look wrong with a ton of colors, though less noticeable. Instead, try and shade it with one or two colors so that it looks right, then add more depending on what you're doing. Not too many though.
- Try and think of the characters spine, and align his body to it. Right now his head is too far forward, and his feet are not balanced very well. I'd shorten HIS left foot by a pixel so it is level with the other foot.
- The head is not a perfect sphere. It looks like you abandon the decent shape of head you had, and made it perfectly round. This doesn't look good, as Souly pointed out.
W00T, awesome feedback.
Pillow Shading, you say? Wikipedia has no article on this...but I have heard of it. I think when I did that, I was trying to make an outline of the character by using a darker shade instead of black. I am starting to understand, though. Since the light source is not in front of this character, it would not be hugely sensible to shade the entire edge of him. I sees it, I sees it...
In addition to pillow'dness, I also understand the dough'dness you speak of. I think I was trying to use more different colors to make up for my lack of detail. Detail will have to come after I fix the coloring, though.
Spine...you know, I never really considered it...I probably should have put more planning into this. Or, planning at all, for that matter XD. And that foot has stumped me for a while. I had moved it down in order to preserve the perspective you were seeing him at. But I think by trying to preserve the perspective, I screwed up how he looked. Yeah, I hears ya.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I still do not understand why I made the head a sphere, nor do I remember WHEN I did that in the first place. I want to say MS Paint did something when I did some final shading and moved it over or something. Vista paint is kinda glitchy...I should get a better program...well, by either Microsoft's fault or mine, it stands that the head will be reverted to one of its previous shapes.
Thanks, yo.
Hoofta, pixelation is a lot trickier than I originally thought. But NO MATTER, for I am too hard-headed to quit, while light-headed enough to accept criticism! With this combination, I shall overcome everything in my way!! FOR GREAT JUSTICE!!