Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: jumbopaulo on May 20, 2011, 03:52:37 am
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so, i made this witchie here and i'd want some tips to improve her, if possible (:
(http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/114/7/f/mage_in_blue_by_jumbopaulo-d3etjuk.gif)
thanks (:
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I swear I've seen this before... O the public queue, hmm I wonder why they didn't approve this, its accepetable, but definitly could be improved. The lighting is what is really bringing you down here, it's a bit pillow shaded, where exactly is your light coming from? O, are you sure you want that cloth transparent? O, yes and the anatomy, but im not going to touch on that.
Here's what im thinking you should do with the cloth... (http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/9611/clothedit.png)
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I did a fast edit, obviously not with PA tools, but it's just to show you.
(http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/4744/mageinbluepolitopoedit.gif)
Hope it helps.
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anatomy is not a problem, i think.
i mean, it was intended since the begin to be "deformed".
but yeah, shading is always a problem to me. i never got to do a good shading :/
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Quick and sloppy scribble of a single light from above. It might be a good idea to practice shading some simple shapes like spheres and cylinders with light coming from different directions to help you get a feel for how light bounces off objects.
(http://i834.photobucket.com/albums/zz263/ErekT_Pixel/witch.gif)
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so, i did a new version:
(http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/155/3/b/mage_in_blue_by_jumbopaulo-d3etjuk.gif)
tell me what you think :)
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Oi, why am I doing this? I promised myself I would never touch anything like this...
Anyhow I'll try to get this done quickly.
The shading's a bit better, sure, but overall the piece lacks unification. If you look in a certain topic about a beginner's first sprite with shading, and scroll down a bit, you'll see EyeCraft's humongous (but potentially extremely helpful) wall of text describing how hue-shifting makes color unificat--wait, here it is (http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=12622.msg123379#msg123379).
And this is the (also quick and sloppy, but hopefully proving a point) edit:
(http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/7884/burnit.png)
What I'm going for here is essentially telling you that each color ramp doesn't agree with other ones, seeming especially separated from eachother, a lot more than they could be. For example, the blue garments, which I may point out there are very little of, are strangely dark--contrasting with the skin--and basically lack any hue-shifting. The hair's a bit closer to where it should be value-wise but, once again, lacks hue-shifting, and almost looks like a wig on her head. Both are also very saturated across all values.
Also on the topic of hair and wigs, you seem to be defining each strand--or rather, group of strands of hair, resulting in unsightly spikes, which is what beginners tend to do. You have to think of hair as more of a blob-like, simplified/ambiguous form, and think of what forces are causing it to move. Is the character standing in a breeze? Is he/she moving swiftly? If so, in which direction? And of course, there's gravity. (Same with clothing.) Then, you don't have to define every group of strands, like you are now--only some strands are necessary to describe which kind of hair the character has. Curly, wavy, straight? Less is sometimes more. When light is applied, texturing it according to the hair type should be the way to go. See what the strokes suggest. Straight hair = straighter strokes. If you have a tablet like me and a lot of other people, good.
Then there's lighting. Once again this is the kind of thing you have to really think about in order to get it to look okay. I find a good technique is thinking about the basic forms your character's made out of (cone, box, sphere etc.) and where, exactly, the light is coming from as well. Also some practice. ErekT was off to a good start, both lighting and palette-wise, so I used his edit as a base, adding shades as I went. If you want the specifics, I added another midtone and a highlight, and went about adding blobs of light and shadow and correcting a few things here and there, adding highlights to places you might want to attract the viewer's eye to (teehee), and masking unimportant, otherwise distracting things in shadow. Then I added some dithering, as this is a fairly large sprite. And some other things, including adding teeth (she looks... Weird without them, really) and a few minor and more technically feasible design changes (which probably could take "witch" out of the title and leave it with only hent--I'm done).
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well, i don't have a tablet, so it's harder haha
i've always this problem with hair, i never know what to do XD
thanks for the tips, i'll try to improve the sprite even more!
(:
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Urrr.. pistachio hinted that your subject matter is a bit ill-chosen and I kinda agree with him. Think about it, what effect are you going for regards your audience? The whole witch part is rather played down with the tiny flame poking out her finger and the off-the-walmart-rack haloween costume she's wearing. The voluptious forms seems to be the whole point here. To be blunt; your piece doesn't seem to communicate anything that a wet tee-shirt contest wouldn't be able to do more successfully. Just suggesting that your piece could be a lot more interesting if you put (way) more emphasis on witch and less on T&A.
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Urrr.. pistachio hinted that your subject matter is a bit ill-chosen and I kinda agree with him. Think about it, what effect are you going for regards your audience? The whole witch part is rather played down with the tiny flame poking out her finger and the off-the-walmart-rack haloween costume she's wearing. The voluptious forms seems to be the whole point here. To be blunt; your piece doesn't seem to communicate anything that a wet tee-shirt contest wouldn't be able to do more successfully. Just suggesting that your piece could be a lot more interesting if you put (way) more emphasis on witch and less on T&A.
Hehe, kind of ironic coming from someone named Erekt. ;)
Ehh, the subject is what it is, if jumbopaulo wants to make a volumptuous witch that's his call. I actually like it, to me it is a metaphor for any woman that overly relies on her looks to get her through life until she is suddenly confronted with a situation that requires her having some kind of practical skill and she is woefully inadequate (Bleh, mess of a sentence). But its not so much cynical as playful. She is forgiven for being who she is.
That's what it says to me, anyway.
As for the piece, I agree completely with pistachio's edit, give it close attention :)
Her right (our left) hand is a little noodly and small, I suggest reworking it a little.
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about the costume:
i'm kind of a rookie in this stuff. i could give her a better costume if it was hand drawn (in paper or tablet). so, i call this costume SLOTH XD
i understand your point, anyways. i'll make a completely new witch from scratch, including new costume, when the semester in my college is over. because if i keep changing this one, i'll never finish it, u know?
about shading/anatomy/that kind of stuff:
as i said, i'm a noob :P
i have a lot to learn yet, patience with me ;D
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Hehe, kind of ironic coming from someone named Erekt. ;)
Hey, that's my real name man :'( Well almost...
Anyway, my last post might have been a bit harsh. Sorry about that. The lineart itself is pretty solid, tho not a big fan of the subject matter for reasons already stated. But it's jumbopaulo's call for sure, I'm just another guy with an opinion so consider or disregard my suggestion as you want.
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about the costume:
i'm kind of a rookie in this stuff. i could give her a better costume if it was hand drawn (in paper or tablet). so, i call this costume SLOTH XD
i understand your point, anyways. i'll make a completely new witch from scratch, including new costume, when the semester in my college is over. because if i keep changing this one, i'll never finish it, u know?
about shading/anatomy/that kind of stuff:
as i said, i'm a noob :P
i have a lot to learn yet, patience with me ;D
Maybe you shouldn't blame a bad costume on which medium you started from, because either way it started from your imagination. Decide which direction you're going in first to make sure the elements are unified--say, maybe you want it to have some African elements or, I don't know, maybe make it look closer to Chun Li's costume. Then, I suppose, you could look up some pictures to get more inspiration from and copy-pasta them into an assorted bowl of clippings. (Ignore that, that was a pun.) And of course, practice. ...I'm not picking up the ConceptArt virus am I?
IMO, the anatomy's good enough--it's just the shading and palette choices you need to work on, I think. Regardless of whether or not you're going to make a new witch, these are things you need to keep in mind to improve.