Lion

[Chis]

Still very much a WIP. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and attempt something semirealistic.
I found out too late that lions don't stretch and snarl at the same time, so I'm just going to keep him in that position.
Also, there's something wrong with his face but I don't know what I'm confused about when to dither and when not to dither, and also about why my palette is such fail. Argharghargh

[Mike]

I have a lot of cats and when I see them stretch their arms go out really straight and most importantly the claws stick out and there is pressure placed on the 2 feet pressing forward otherwise they would be off balance.  Right now your lion looks like its gently pressing a large button.  You gotta squash the two front feet so we feel it's weight.



SQUASH  is a great way to show the object's or character's weight. Note the weight in the feet above. The heavier the character, the more squashed the feet will look.

The weight (or squash) is based on on three elements:

    * The substance of the object or character -- is is rubber, metal, flesh, what?
    * The speed at which it travels and its impact.
    * The actual weight of the object.

TIP: Start with simple shapes and add to them. Details are added last, as shown above with the face.

Heres the link to that site.  I only hot linked it so you would see it immediately.

http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/lesson.htm#top

As always when you are learning from things take only what is useful to you.  Just letting you know that I think this guys characters suck

[Manupix]

I found out too late that lions don't stretch and snarl at the same time, so I'm just going to keep him in that position.

Not sure I understand you; anyway the position doesn't look very settled. I'd go for a full stretch.
Check some refs! Google, or flickr.

Your palette is not a fail. 
It just needs a less saturated orange, and probably a darker, less sat yellow.

I'm confused about when to dither and when not to dither.

When is indeed the good question: at the end! When you have your shading firmly done, then you start refining, which might but doesn't have to include dithering and anti-aliasing.
A little dithering might help since the texture it brings is usually ok on animal fur.
At this point, you have far too much of it.

[Chis]

Thanks for the comments!
What I mean is, lions usually don't stretch when they are angry.

Killed the dithering mostly (cheated and added colors) and started refining the hair.
So the thing is, I actually did use a reference when I was pixelling. The legs are pretty much at the same angle. The front paws I would love to 'squash' but I tried and they start looking disconnected from the body. Rather, I think it's the ginormish cartoonish head that's throwing it off, because the shoulder blades don't show and he doesn't have that sort of leaned back expression on his face to top it off (quite the contrary). I tried lengthening the body and forepaws to make him look more stretchy or something but meh, his head is already starting to look detached. Maybe I should just stick with a boring standing position instead.

[Manupix]

Maybe one problem is that he looks down. From many of those refs, stretching lions look up.
This would make you redraw the head, but might help you connect it since you would then show more body.
The big head doesn't make it easy, but it's sure worth trying.
I'd suggest to look for cartoon lions too, to see how artists overcome the difficulty of exaggerated proportions.

Colors: the new greyish yellow works weirdly, because it is between 2 more saturated colors in the ramp.
I also think the new dark brown, at least, is unnecessary.

I like it that the shadows are blueish. It's a globally interesting palette, just needs a little fixing.

[Chis]

This shouldn't have taken so long to update ...
Well, I figured out how they make a cartoon lion stretch - avoid it at all costs
So I decided to do the same, and redraw the body instead of the head (also cause I wanted to keep him angry).
Still WIP.

The back leg's actually supposed to be a little raised but I'm having a hard time depicting that.

[EvilEye]

It's not bad. The right half of the face looks like it's in a shadow. I think you need to balance out the dark shades a bit more. Unless you want it to look like he's got a huge spotlight on his left side.

[Chis]

Well, that sort of was the intention. Not a spotlight, but a torch maybe, or else some sort of concentrated light that'd create a strong contrast. I'll probably give him a dungeonish background for that purpose.

[Chis]

Long overdue update:



Didn't get too much done but the background's mapped out now.
I meant for a wall with a rocky texture but obviously that's not turning out too well.

[Mathias]

It's a chibi lion. His head is huge. BG looks like an underground Colosseum chamber, right before he's released to fight the gladiators; ancient Rome.