Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Jewdozer on February 28, 2011, 05:25:51 pm
-
Ok, first off I'm new here and my main reason for posting is because I want to learn as much from you here as I can, the art on these boards is wonderful. I love drawing nudes so I'd like some crit on what I do.
Reading the rules it seems as long as I tag my threads properly then this stuff is ok. Here we go.
(http://lolokaust.com/guides/abortion%20guide/ripped_out.png)
Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give me.
-
Hi... Jewdozer.
Your image shows an understanding of anatomy (or at least the capacity to follow the forms from reference). So you're already a step ahead as far as making effective art goes. However the pixel technique you use is rudimentary. There's lots of banding, bad dithering and generally bad clusters in your work. The palette is uncontrolled. If these terms are unfamiliar to you, go read a thread called "A Brainstorm Approaches" in the general board, it'll disambiguate enough, I hope.
Some of the problems of your art emerge from that it's so large. Even at half size it's a bit unwieldy. I made a color and mini-edit in the middle here:
(http://locustleaves.com/swan.gif)
As you see even at half size the image doesn't lose information. The edit uses less than 16 colors. The original has 160 or so of them. Also I increased the dramatic contrast in the image, it felt natural. The shadow on the face doesn't make much sense as it is, and even in my edit it's too much, but it might be important to the mood of the piece so I tried to negotiate it somewhat.
I'm sorry I can't give you more specific points, really. You'll have to read that thread if you want to see where I'm coming from, there's just too much as far as pixelling technique goes to explain everything over this one image. If you keep posting updates and show positive movement I'll try to explain more.
A word on the theme: It seems to me the dancing girl is one picture, and the crude expulsion of baby is another, like an afterthought or perhaps you're working over somebody else's piece? Please explain the motivation behind this. The theme is crude and vulgar, but I've seen worse. So if that's an attempt to troll, I'm afraid you wasted both of our time.
-
Yeah, the exploding baby seems like it was made by a completely different person.
-
I didn't want to look at this for more than 30 seconds but I did notice mismatched lighting sources and differences in light intensity.
I sense edited trollery.
-
Well if anyone knows the real person who made the art, they could tell them they got some critique they didn't ask for! :P
-
Ok . . . this image is ridiculous, man. Graceful angelic female spewing demon children explosively from her lower sacred region? Really?
The hair, wings and devil-baby appear to be tacked on after the fact, like the female form there was re-purposed and given hair, wings and and some graceful standing birthing action. Is she even aware she just gave birth?
My first impression of this was that it's a joke.
Bits along top of wings seems odd. Should be more feathery? Less like a peice of unnatural pre-formed plastic. Just seems too "factory".
Could you find a way to re-shape the wings to be more harmonious with the existing implied contour lines made by the woman? Would achieve a better flow. The wings still need a ton of refining, AA, etc, so changing them now shouldn't hurt too much.
And I just have to comment on the birthing going on again . . . look at her pose. Her legs are clenched together as she stands. When giving birth what does a woman do? Her legs are spread wide as her cervix is dilated and there's maximum passage space given to the baby. But, this nonchalant chick is prancing through the air with her legs clenched, and the "birthing exit" (yeah thassright) surely concealed between her inner thighs at the moment of satan-baby placenta explosion. Come on, think about it! It's all wrong wrong wrong.
Rib ridges don't seem right.
What's up with the carved in lines across the stomach?
Her hair indicates a misshapen cranium. All bulbous.
Haha this is just ridiculous! What a contradiction of subject-matter. Curious to see how this one shapes up alright . . .
-
Looks like trolling to me.
The hair and wings are pretty amateur, while the body looks to be traced from a picture or something. The whole thing looks pieced together.
-
I sense edited trollery.
My first impression of this was that it's a joke.
Looks like trolling to me.
It may seem as if we're all jumping to conclusions, but I have to agree. At first glance, before scrolling down the page I noticed immediately several things strange about the pixel art.
First thought: Wow, this is pretty big. Shouldn't you start smaller before you move on to bigger things?
Thought #2, the body of this woman, who I presume is some sort of fake mythical god-thing, just seems too perfect. Or, should I say, the lighting is too perfect as opposed to the hair, wings, and face, which seem particularly amateur in comparison. It's as if you just pulled up reference for the body, copied that, and then just slapped on everything else at the last minute. Did you really draw everything in here, as you said, without reference? If so you have a head start in anatomy, a pretty valuable skill. But if not, shame on you for trolling.
The lower half of the body was rather surprising in a disturbing way, about as much Goatse, but that's just me.
My third thought about this, though, is about the same as my second thought. The hideous newborn demon she just gave birth to seems about as slapped on at the last minute as hair, wings, and anything else I've listed under that category. Mathias was right. I mean, is birthing just a regular occasion for her? As in, every other hour? Jesus, that's disturbing. That pose and this action do not compute. They're just impossible, simple as that.
Upon further inspection I do take note of enough banding, colors, and over-dithering to fill in for dozens of works of pixel art. More than enough at the least.
Overall the whole thing just seems as if you have only a vague idea of what you're doing.
I don't mean to be so harsh but you probably have a long way to go.
-
I want this image on a t-shirt. I'd be so popular.
I just also want to add that her birthing makes no sense at all. She's birthing the baby in the same direction that a man would pee ' ___ ' wtf
also, pistachio, I wouldn't say posting a picture drawn from reference without stating the reference is 'trolling'. Sometimes it's just out of forgetfulness or something else. We'll see.
People, don't throw the word troll around too much, it's fun calling troll, but hey, we don't know. And if it is indeed some kind of trolling, as in someone who wanted to make us discuss/give critique/get upset over an image made in jest, then whatever, noone is upset and the critique given might be helpful to someone else.
And that's that.
-
This does indeed seem to be genuine: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11464 as this PJ thread indicates.
-
jewdozer is a genuine artist, and I've had the pleasure of working with jewdozer in the past.
Something that I think can be improved is the transition of the darkness(or brightness) of her skin, I think lowering the contrast of each part of the colouring would make it look a lot better. Also make the transition parts (between light and dark) slightly bigger so that it doesn't go so abrupt into the shade.
-
I've known artists who could paint better than I could with a reference (copying what they could see), but can't paint from their minds. Their art looks a lot like this. Very well done, realistic looking characters with poorly painted extras tack'd on. Or sometimes their anatomy is well done, but if they try to change the light source from the one in reality, they totally screw up the shading and highlights.
I'd just suggest starting from square one (Or should I say circle one :crazy:) and draw only from the mind.
-
The palettes don't really work together to form a single piece, rather than work against eachother.
Try hue shifting, might help a bit.
-
Wow this is fantastic, all this crit to soak up. I always get accused of trolling when I post on boards and it's got me banned once or twice.
I do use a lot of reference pics for my drawings and the main ref was for the posing girl. The demon was drawn from my head as were the wings which proves the technical eye on these boards is razor sharp, thats why I'm here.
Only recently I've tried to step up my game to a more professional standard. I came here for a bashing because I want to get better, so far this forum has not let me down. Thanks a lot for the help so far especially Helm, the edit was very helpful.
On the topic of what I'm drawing this for, well I can't link it, the topic is not really suitable for this forum and I don't want to drag that stuff here.
Didn't know you were on this forum Greg, but I should have known, some of your animations lately suggest you have been doing a bit of technical reading.
Heres the ref btw> http://sadpanda.us/images/336608-A8XN7XE.jpg