Good god, helm, thanks a shit ton for both the writeup and the edit.
I really appreciate the compliments, and even more so the crits and advice. It makes me happy that you see not just life in the piece, but an individual, since that's one thing I always try to strive for, especially when doing personal pieces (and in particular, portrait-type pieces). Just a note, though, the pallete isn't actually mine, it's just cribbed from the [standard?] fadatar pallete (with one extra color and possibly one or two hue shifts, though I cant recall if I kept those).
Before I get to responding, I'll put up the current wip and another process anigif. This was done before I noticed your massive post, so there's tons of stuff as yet unaddressed.
Tweaked face shape, hat, a few other things. I think I may have to tweak the face shape more, though. Need sleep for fresh eyes. And I don't know why I brought the shoulders in so far... That'll need fixing tomorrow...
Also, I should probably link to the ref I'm using:
Ref photoI'm a tad sleepy, so a more in-depth response may have to wait til tomorrow, but I'd like to address a couple of things. Alright, first off, and in my defense, the piece is far from done, and I basically put it up for crits at an early stage to see if there was anything ridiculously wrong with it to date (eg, the hair wasn't completely AA'd yet).
That said, your points and edit definitely helped clear up some questions/doubts. For one, I wasn't too sure how much selective dithering I could get away with in order to reduce banding and increase my perceived colour pallete. Your edit definitely opened my eyes some as far as smart dithering is concerned. I think I have to get into the habit of referring to the 1:1 preview in ProMotion more. Too often I tend to focus on the 8:1 working view and think the dithering isn't working (ie, at 8:1 my eyes don't benefit from visual mixing).
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My point about this being wip was meant as a response to the comment about lack of polish. While I'm under no illusions as to whether I can polish a pixel piece to perfection (still plenty of work and learning to do on that front, among others), I just wanted to point out that I'm still noodling with "blocking", so to speak, trying to nail not only a likeness, but also her personality. That said, I'm still taking your advice on polish to heart, as it was all very useful.
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To your point about faking sub-pixel detail, that's probably one of the things I enjoy the most about pixel art, and the nostril and eye areas were probably the bits that taxed my brain/eyes the most in that regard. I still have tons to learn, but at least it's an enjoyable sort of learning.
The hat I actually hadn't gotten to properly at the time of my previous post, so the shading was a tad funky, though it was blocked in based on the ref photo (the right side was kinda botched, though, and I overdid the underlighting on the visor bit). I've addressed that in my latest wip, though it's still as yet unfinished.
Once again, I'll probably reread your massive response after a good night's sleep and respond accordingly (ie, gushing with adoration
), but I wanted to thank you for taking the time out to writing all that.
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More wip-ness:
At this point I think I'm noodling a bit too much. Fun mental exercise, though, shifting things a fraction of a pixel.
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[edit3]
Latest wip. It's coming along, and I'm much happier with the likeness now. Still experimenting with the dithering, etc. Not entirely happy with the cap yet.
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