-Tourist: I have a question, how does using gray scale make the anatomy better? I tried it but It looked terrible so I didn't want to post it.
Well palette won't explicitly improve anatomy, but working in monochrome simplifies the value analysis process. This in turn gives you easier control of rendering form, which in turn lets you nail your anatomy easier.
Working in monochrome is a good study process; anatomy is something to be studied, so they go together well. I think that's what Tourist is trying to say.
As for crit:
- Pillow shaded! Define the light source, block in the shadow areas, blend shadow to midtone, add highlights and speculars.
- The flat black of the guns is kind of distracting and feels out of place. It contrasts in value so heavily to the rest of the piece, which is dominated by mid tones.
- The character of the guns themself don't seem to fit. They look like glocks or some kind of relatively modern pistol. When I look at this girl (or any of the Metal Slug characters) I'm think crazy adventurer action heros, like Indiana Jones or whatever. The tools they use should have personality.
- Pants look like her butt-crack would be showing. Have the belt come up as it goes around behind her
- Arms are blobby. Find some reference photos for arms in that pose
- Clavicles (collar bones) are angled the wrong way. They angle up, even when the arms are down by your side.
- Face is flattened an distorted. The eye positioning is particularly the problem. As the face turns into profile the far eye is occluded by the nose. Also the whole mouth area has a convex curvature out from the face, which brings the bottom of the nose out as we turn into profile.
- Far earring should be more occluded, I think.
- Lot of banding going on in the folds of her blouse
- Could use a little more red in areas of the skin, particularly the nose, cheeks and ears
- Could get more red into the pants, contrast the greens in the rest of the image
- Some selout going on (arms, hair), which is death to pixel art (mostly).
I like the pose a lot, though. It's classic action shot. Look forward to updates!