Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Helm on November 24, 2005, 02:01:32 pm
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(http://www.locustleaves.com/wor6.png)
self-portrait, that's the finished image above.
Steps:
(http://www.locustleaves.com/wor.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/wor2.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/wor3.png)
(http://www.locustleaves.com/wor4.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/wor5.png) (http://www.locustleaves.com/wor6.png)
step 1 was noreference, just clocking out shapes and where things would be, employed mirror for step two, lots of fixes, tweaks, and some light study. Step 3 is where I start clocking down colours, pretty ambitious colour theory employed, pep helped on irc. Step 4 and 5 are rendering rendering rendering. Step 6 is where the stencil yellow sign is applied, and that's it! Finished! This is a continuation of the 'every colour everywhere' colour theory I've stolen from Cyclone ( and well... Max Ernst, really ).
Comments and critique welcome, from blatant to nitpick, to style suggestions and what have you. If something's really wrong, or a comment really illuminates, I'll go back and edit/fix.
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Really like the final product and showing the steps has given me some ideas. I've got nothing to criticize really but could you point out some resources on color theory? Everything I've done color related has been a lot of guess work.
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http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/VA10/HTML/GoethesTriangle.html
this thing above is real fun, I suggest you use it.
Now, it's still guesswork for me, but there are basic rules. I lack deep technical knowledge, but generally I avoid too much saturation in natural surfaces, ultra saturation is for plastic colour and human made reflectives, of which I don't draw much anyway. So as long as you keep saturation low, you pick a hue, any hue :P well whatever hue you think will make a good base. Let's say we're making a human face. A desaturated dry flesh tone will do. From there, we consider the lightsource tint. Lightsources have tints. daylight is bright yellow and reflective blues and what have you. Therefore we start making the shades go towards the yellow highlight we need. The darker shades should complement the yellow with the opposite colour in the colourwheel, in this case, purple. So darker shades mean less saturation, and towards purple. Lighter shades, more saturation ( naturally, but don't overdo it). That's pretty basic, and I've done the purple-flesh-yellow skin ramp for spritework for the last 3 years or something. However, here I have 16 shades, which is way more than I'd need for modest purple-flesh-yellows. so what do I do with intermediate shades? I decide to represent other parts of the colourwheel, do near neighbour tints. Now, this is a bit guesswork and a bit 'lol let's see how much we can cram into this thing lol!' but not as much as you'd think. For example, I selected mid-range pinks/oranges because I knew I'd need them for where the flesh is pink with sanguine humour so to speak, and greens because I wanted that sort of zombie thing going on. So when you have a few primary tints, and a few secondary tints, you try to bridge from one shade to the next, the fine art of minmaxing lightness/constrast/hue to have a servicable ramp. for example, when I entered the first orange on the cheek in step 3 after pep suggested oranges, I just selected the colour below (a blue shade) and shifted the hue to orange to see how it looks. However, this is not a finalized shade. For this shade to be used for maximal effect, it has to NOT be the same lightness and saturation as the shade below it, it needs to be lighter, or darker, even if it's by a little bit ( you can get shades to work with eachother even if they're 10 or 20 lightness apart if you tweak the saturation. It's really hit and miss here ) so it becomes part of the RAMP, not just an alternate tint to be used only here and there. My focus is on using all the colours everywhere, at this time in my pixel art path, therefore unifying the palette is no1 priority on any piece for me. This creates, however, baroque-ish and monochromatic pieces. everything just melts into itself, a wonderful flurry of colours. This is the effect I want, but others prefer segmented colours and more game-arty things. Look at the three blick coloured pieces by myself, tomi and pep. Look how Tomi made it into a game sprite, with 3 ramps ( blue, red, green ) pep applied his special stylistics with the bright but unified palette, and mine is sorta monochromatic, every colour everywhere...
hope the rambling helps. If you need any clarifications, ask.
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Thanks, Helm, appreciate the response. I'll spend some time digesting and I'ill get back to you if something is still fuzzy. Awesome link by the way. ;D
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Wow Helm, that's some nice info, and the pic also. Read all that text now, seems really interesting. Gotta try that sometime. Nice link with the "game" too.
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boy you are ugly!!!
lol
no just kidding. that really a cool piece. not only the coloring but the face expression. it's like you are the one taking the picture, not the viwer.
take care, and show more.
Kaz
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I'm always impressed at your ability to use really odd colors in places you wouldn't expect them, but make it look completely natural.
My hat is off to you.
P.S. You look kinda like Bob Marley. ;)
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Helm, Helm, Helm what can i say? That is out of this world man! This is truly inspirering! No crits from me. Well done! Love it!
Thanks,
Dan
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The colors are so cool; it almost looks like gasoline when its on concrete. The facial structure is really good, but something changes from step 3 to 6.
The expression in three is definitely more lively than six. Its pretty hard to explain. It just isn't as obscure as step six. The nose is smaller in three, too, which I thought looked better. I know this is a self portrait, and the tweaks were probably intentional to capture yourself, but I thought three was more clear.
Don't get me wrong though, this is my favorite piece of yours now; its great, man. Its similar to the last piece you did, but so much better. The sign is a nice touch, too; it gives it spunk.
And because I always forget to spank: Make a game!
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All of these things are just opinion as it is a face, and you really can't be "wrong." Still here are my gripes. The first thing that struck me was the brightness and shape of your eyes and the left eyebrow. The brightness seems a touch too much in my opinion. I always thought that eyebrows and eyelids provided a good amount of shadow on the eyes. The shape is really defined in post parts, but starts to bleed out into the rest of the face near the corners. I'm assuming this was done to indicate eyelashes, but the places without seem very blurry. The left eyebrow just seems to be a lot thinner than the other. Next I'll talk about the nose. The highlighted square near the top (which I've always wondered if it had a name) of the nose seems to be very prominent. I would try to soften the transitions leading to it. Your left nostril's highlight makes it appear as though it's very low and very close to the bridge of the nose. Almost like you're inhaling on just that side. You lips are also very heavily shaded making them look almost outlined. If you just broke that shadow near the bottom's corners it looks much more natural.
I love the coloring, and I myself have tried to use "every color," but to no end like this. Very well done.
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mine is sorta monochromatic, every colour everywhere...
Ýours was sort of monochromatic? Man does that sound like oversimplifying....I think you should call it ubichromatic, you know? for ubiquitous?
u·biq·ui·tous
adj.
Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time; omnipresent: "plodded through the shadows fruitlessly like an ubiquitous spook" Joseph Heller.
I think that'd fit perfectly :p ubichromatic color theory haha
that is awesome. I really like how you did this, but I got no idea how you actually did it :p I'm gonna try and study it as much as I can, but I would like it to give it a diferent twist, here you almost try to make every color seem like the other, I want to make them bring eachother out a little more.
oh BTW, I was amazed with that little applet, I really dont have the foggiest about mixing colors O_o in that little triangle I never even came close, damn. Also, I didnt get the last excersise at all....make the a the opposite of the b and the c vs a minus a?.....huh?
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Looks like you're doing something similar to the Munsell colour system, right?
I dunno if you're familiar with it.
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yeah it definitely reminds me of some of the experiments we did with our Munsell books in color theory class. Hmm I'll definitely have to try doing one of these. I'm still really crap at picking colors and making them work. Your result here is very nice. Good work. The eyes are really bringing it down though. They look like how people draw eyes before they learn to draw eyes. Too bright as someone else pointed out. And don't really look spherical, unnatural eyelid shape. Also too big. Just my opinion, they could use some love. The rest of the face is pretty realistic and it makes those eyes really stand out as odd.
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The chin looks like you've been punched and its shattered and bits have fallen off. I'm guessing this is facial hair but right now it looks really whack to me.
Overall, solid colours and a groin-grabbingly good piece.
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Hello. Thanks for the ideas and crits! That's what I like to hear, you spotted a lot of errors and 'near-errors'. I went back to edit a few things:
(http://www.locustleaves.com/wor7.png)
First of all, the eyes. Locrian and Darion are absolutely right, the rendering was just silly. Too bright, too 'blankety'. It's not correct now either, I just darkened the whites and made them more flat, but it's still not as 'alive' as in step 3. I slimmed down the nose shadow, which was a good idea, put a tricky little underlight on the lip and eased up on the lip outlines on both lip edges. Minor tweaks here and there, really, besides the eyes. But the eyes trouble me still. Edits, anyone? The shape is proper, it's the rendering that's doing things to it.
The eyebrows, chin and stuff stay as they are, currently. I'm still pondering David's crits, will see...
The colors are so cool; it almost looks like gasoline when its on concrete.
Yes! That's the effect! Swirling purples and diffracted orange and and and ALIEN mixes of otherwordly beauty. And the smell makes you high too.
boy you are ugly!!!
My mom doesn't seem to think so!!!
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nice work.. you look kinda like a cross between maddox and johnny depp.. or however you spell his name
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I dunno what your eye shape is like, but I really doubt it is like that. There is way too much of a straight line on the eye lids. And if you look at your image and imagine what the eye balls would look like if you had no eye lids, those things would be friggen huge!
Here is a quick edit:
(http://rpgdx.net/locrian/images/helmedit.png) or opened a bit:
(http://rpgdx.net/locrian/images/helmedit2.png)
Maybe not your eyes, but a little more realistic looking yeah? The eyes you gave yourself make you look like an alien or an anime character.
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sexxxxelent
(http://www.locustleaves.com/wor8.png)
Went ahead and shamelessly copied you, and also fixed the stubble on chin everybody was complaining about. Anything left?
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thumbs up rainbow man! :D
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1 error still remains: You look squint-eyed (cross-eyed) your right eye (left eye on picture) is not looking straight forward.