Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Tijjer on July 20, 2014, 09:33:04 pm

Title: Jade [C&C]
Post by: Tijjer on July 20, 2014, 09:33:04 pm
So anyways I can improve it please say so!  I wish to get better and make future pieces better!

(http://i1145.photobucket.com/albums/o502/TijjerGamepark/jade_zps4b0e6ce4.png)
Title: Re: Jade [C&C]
Post by: Tourist on July 26, 2014, 02:15:49 am
Here's what I see:

1) Your value scale is off.  Everything is too light and it ends up looking all washed out.  Maybe check your gamma settings in whatever application you are using.

2) The head is constructed symmetrically, then the features are just pushed to one side.  Real heads don't do that.

Here's a reference:

(http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/c30466efddff.jpg)

The cheek line is more vertical, and the jaw line is more horizontal.  The tip of the chin lines up with the inside corner of the far eye.

3) You've drawn the eyes like fried eggs on a plate.  There are many eye shapes available that work, but fried eggs is not one of them.

For the eye, start with a simple shape.  Then shade in an eye socket.  Since this is a female head, I added a big curved eyebrow.  It's not realistic, but it breaks up the brow line and implies a curve to the whole eye shape that doesn't really exist.  It's a style choice. 

How big should the eyes be?  The width of the eyes should be roughly the skull height divided by 6 or 7 for a realistic head.  Maybe add one to that for over-sized eyes.

This is what it looks like when you fix the eyes and put the jaw in the right spot:

(http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/68934eb579f4.png)

The far eye is the same height as the near one, but one pixel less wide.  The mouth and the base of the nose are only sketched in to show where they might go.  Oh, I moved the ear down to where it goes, on the side of the head rather than the top.  Already it looks much better. 


I think that there is a sweet spot for portraits with a skull height of 18-20 pixels, and another sweet spot at twice that height.  A head that has a 28-32 pixel skull is tough, because some of the dimensions don't map to neat pixel intervals.  The features are either to wide or too narrrow, too thin or too thick.  The eyes aren't bad, but a 3 pixel mouth is a bit too thick, the eyebrows are a bit of trouble, and the base of the nose is either going to be too wide or too narrow.  This could just be the way I draw things, you may find this size to work well for you. 

At this size I end up either using a deformed head shape (chibi or dollz style), or bumping up the color count to work at half pixel scale.  For this edit I used a 6-step gray scale, plus one for the highlight at the tip of the nose, and about 6 green colors for the eyes and lips.  You could probably do this with fewer colors and it would look fine. 

Then I went nuts:

(http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/59034209a305.png)

Eh, overdid the lips.  Oh, well.  The second head uses the same eyes and almost the same mouth.  The only differences are the width of the nose, the jawline, and the hair.  It doesn't take a lot to make characters look very different.

Hope this helps,
Tourist