Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: flaber on September 27, 2006, 03:20:59 am
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yeah, I thought of that peice by Josh Astorian when I first saw this.
Some things:
The light shades on the hair are too prominent and distinct, I'd tone that down a little.
Your pixeled face overall isn't round enough, most notably the cheeks. The chin and forehead too. Bring the shades in further
The nose looks really bumpy. Flatter shading here with a sharper change in shading at the tip of the nose would work better, I think.
The face looks too long, shorten it a few pixels?
I'm confused about the reverse selout on your left ear. having the darker purple right next to the shades of your ear without buffering looks out of place and choppy.
That's all for now
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I agree with darien's crits, but so far I think it looks excellent. the chin looks like it pokes in way too far though. anyway, good luck with it.
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I helped crit this while it was being made.
So most of the things I saw wrong with it were corrected. <3
can't wait to see final.
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The darkness around the neck and adams apple is too severe, as though the neck and head are completely seperate and simply smushed together. Also, Accentuate the angle more. I notice you've done the nose as if the light were coming from above it, whilest in the picture, the top of the nose is darker due to the lighting. When I say top, I dont mean like the bridge of the nose and above, I mean everything north of where the underside of the nose takes a turn.
Use some highlights. Directly under the nose to the lips, the edges of your cheeks near the mouth, following the lines coming from the sides of the nostrils, where the underside of the nose turns upwards, above the nose, and in the crease of your forhead(because really, its far too empty in the protrait. Theres stuff going on in the pictures forhead, but youve neglected stuff like that character adding crease.)
Good job. :)
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(http://joshastorian.com/pixelart/light_my_fire.gif)
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At the moment, what I think it ruins the picture is how you use all the tones for the shading, using them gradually from darker to lighter.
I guess, you can improve it by wisely picking the shadow colors and if anything AA.
Also your eyebrows (from what I saw on the reference) are more straight, and your nostrils are a bit thicker.
And yeah dont forget to shade where the adam's apple is supposed to be, at the moment in yours looks like there are two holes right under your chin.
Edit: Typo edit :X
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Your ears are also a bit bigger :D
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Nice work flaber! I like it! I got a few crits though. In my opion there could be some more darker tones under the chin because if you look at the photo there is a larger and darker shadow caused. Also personally i would make the neck slightly darker so the adams apple would stick out a bit more. I love the portrait! Good work.
Dan
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ok - so big change to last time
basically redid the whole thing
here it is - with 3 diff backgrounds (couldnt decide which i liked best)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/pport1.png)(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/pport2.png)(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/pport2-1.png)
(originally created in lightest background)
played with a bit of texturing and blending
played abit with colours
experimented with several different things
tried to get more form/flow developed by dithering in such a way that somewhat resembles pencil strokes, flowing to fit the surface
wanted to use the wasted space in solid colour areas - created similar shade in different hue to add extra texture, detail, blendin, etc
played abit with hue variation (im no good at it, ohwell)
experimented with using cooler colours in shadows, and slightly warmer in light areas
this was a learning / experimenting project for me
i think it did its job
15 colours
not sure if i should add more to the hair or not
what do you think?
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That's wonderful. Bold shading thechnique, usually we go for the 'oily smooth' version, with 50% dithers where needed etc. I am very happy with how the 'scribbly' thing worked here, because usually this sort of technique creates jaggied monsters that are inexcusable in their roughness. This has just the right amount of texture, I think! Nice colors, great update. Congrats.
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hey, wow, thanks helm
glad you like it :)
didnt always start off as this though
it went through abunch of different stages - and slowly evolved into this
here - ill share some steps incase someones interested to see
originally i had wanted to do the oily smooth look to it
little - no dithering, all block colours
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/extra%20stuffs/bport.png)
(8 colours)
when i did this though, i found it to be very harsh looking, and knew the colours had to be blended somehow because of how harsh they were together
next i knew i had to blend the colours. i played abit with regular dithering, using 50%, or dither gradients and such, but didnt much care for it. the looks it gave me just werent right.
i also noticed that it just didnt give me the form i wanted. the dithering aided in the harsh look because of the checkerboard patterns, and diagonal lines it creates. No flow, all geometric patterns.
i needed something that could blend the colours and provide the right form
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/extra%20stuffs/purt1-1.png)
(8 colours)
this is where i developed my attempt at what i call dynamic dithering. the dithering wasnt set really to any patterns, yet was still organized enough to flow and blend. this began to give me an interesting texture. original dithering gave kind of a sandy grainy look - this i found to give more of a clay / sculpted look.
I found this was starting to go along the lines of what I wanted. but like you mentioned, it has 'jaggied monsters' and unexplained roughness. this led to my next problem to try and solve
i have the right depth - right form - right shading. that im all happy with
however - its rough and jaggy. i need to fix this
this is where my theory of double pallete blending (i call it - sorry for poor terminology) came in. by creating a duplicate pallete, but changing the hue while keeping same shade (well, slightly lighter or darker then corresponding but basically the same), i found my solution. this extra pallete does not affect shading / lightsource at all because it is the same shade as the base pallete. It acts as a buffer, or a transition between the shades. in addition it aids in hueshifting for the overall piece.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/flaber/extra%20stuffs/purt2-1.png)
(15 colours)
my reasoning behind this is because with the original pallete alone the eye focuses on the difference of shades, making the jaggies stand out. when adding the second pallete the eye then focuses on different shades and colours causing focus on more random things everywhere, rather than focusing on teh shade difference alone.
in addition to all this - the other key factor that this can do is, normally texture is created by shading/dithering/transition of colours. when there is a large space of 1 solid colour it is empty space. by using this second colour you can utilize that wasted space and add more info about the texturing and directions of the form. it utilizes all the space of the image.
i was inspired by photographs - lots of areas that look like a simlar colour, yet there are tons of different colours all contributing slightly to their own way of shaping texture
however - as you can see, my colour choices were kind of extreme
my last step in this was now just playing with colours
texture, form, and shading i all like - just colours seem to be off
played with colours... made slight slight touchups (not really though)
and ended with the final image
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8 color one looks best IMO.
I think the lips need more work in all cases though, they seem blurred in comparison to the rest of the image.
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I like the 15 colour one a lot better, more interesting to look at.