Pixelation

Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: 100%Polyester on August 04, 2005, 04:37:28 am

Title: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: 100%Polyester on August 04, 2005, 04:37:28 am
Hi everyone, just introducing maself and giving you all something to crit.  Be as harsh as you want...i need to get better somehow. 
(http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/9269/chuckyfinal8uy.gif)19 colours including transparency
 Its Chucky! (Obviously??)
I've called it finished for a while now, but I'm still certainly welcome to change anything that could use a touch up.  I don't have my reference anymore either, sorry bout that, but if you google image search 'Chucky' you should find the right pic.


Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: lief on August 04, 2005, 04:58:03 am
Quote
Its Chucky! (Obviously??)

very obviously.  this is awesome, i'm thinking seeing you're going low color, why not really low?  you can cut at least 4 shades out of that, maybe more (helm?).

nose looks slightly flat maybe?  hair is very detailed all the way through it.  better effect might be achieved by highlighting areas of the hair with the amount of detail you have applied, and cutting back slightly for the rest.  This would also actually create the illusion of greater detail. 

very good work though.
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: 100%Polyester on August 04, 2005, 05:15:06 am
Thanks for the kind words lief.  I'm kinda new(?) to pixelling (started around mid february), and this is my best work yet. *too ashamed to post others*. 
Quote
nose looks slightly flat maybe?
Yea, i see what you mean, ill give it a go later on

Quote
i'm thinking seeing you're going low color, why not really low?  you can cut at least 4 shades out of that, maybe more (helm?).
I wasn't really aiiming for low colour, i just chose colours that suited :P...BTW whats helm?

Quote
hair is very detailed all the way through it.  better effect might be achieved by highlighting areas of the hair with the amount of detail you have applied, and cutting back slightly for the rest.  This would also actually create the illusion of greater detail.
Yea this was the first time for me to create anything semi-detailed, and the hair really had me stumped for a fair while.  Although i think it looks reasonable, I would really appreciate any more tips and pointers to make it look better

EDIT: I just noticed helm is another member here....is that who you were referring to?
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: Negative Gravity on August 04, 2005, 05:36:22 am
Nice job on the hair. I really can't think of anything to critique on on this peice. So as to not leave this post empty I think this is your reference pic.

(http://www.popcorn.dk/images/nyt014.jpg)

 :D
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: 100%Polyester on August 04, 2005, 06:23:22 am
Ta Negative Gravity.  Yes indeedy that was the reference.  Thanks for that :)
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: Rydin on August 04, 2005, 06:50:50 am
The dithering looks very good, and the color choices match excelently. Also, the textures in the hair is very good. The only thing that really takes away from this piece is the highlighting on the forehead. I don't think it should come from the corner, but instead, should be an "island", with the next darkest color going around it. Other than that, this is a very good piece.  Keep up the outstanding work.
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: 100%Polyester on August 04, 2005, 08:04:33 am
...The only thing that really takes away from this piece is the highlighting on the forehead. I don't think it should come from the corner, but instead, should be an "island", with the next darkest color going around it....
Yeah, i see what you mean now i look at it.  That highlighting is really getting on my nerves now lol....i'll have to have a go at fixing it up sometime...
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: PyroPiranha on August 04, 2005, 08:36:52 am
It's nice, very nice.  I am however curious, if this is a trace.  Your image seems to fit right over the head of the refrence picture that ng posted.
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: 100%Polyester on August 04, 2005, 08:46:48 am
Quote
It's nice, very nice.  I am however curious, if this is a trace.  Your image seems to fit right over the head of the refrence picture that ng posted.
The basic outline of the face, eyes, and the hair to a degree were traced from the referance image.  I started this pic after having  a quick glimpse of so-lou's tutorial (http://www.deviantart.com/view/16080908/), thus explaining my use of chucky (im not much of a fan to tell the truth :P), and I loosely followed the same technique outlined in her tutorial.  Is this wrong?...I don't really know, but I presumed it was ok. ???
If you want I can post various stages of progress.
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: PyroPiranha on August 04, 2005, 12:48:14 pm
I don't mind, I think it looks nice, it was a question of curiosity.  Generaly your safe if you call it before it's found out, but dont worry I dont bite :P
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: ptoing on August 05, 2005, 06:44:49 pm
I did a small edit on it. Mainly i reduced the colors from 19 to 12, as there were many similar colors that were not next to another so it does not really hurt at all if you get rid of them. I also added some antialiasing, mainly at the hairline, the mouth and the eyes, and last of all i added some hightlights to the hair.

About the colorreduction: basically it is not necessary if you pixel for fun, but I am a lowcolorwhore and like to restrain myself in those terms.

mine - yours
(http://ptoing.net/chucky_edit.gif)(http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/9269/chuckyfinal8uy.gif)

cheerios
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: Helm on August 05, 2005, 08:42:19 pm
(http://www.locustleaves.com/chucky3.gif)

one colour less, smarter tint, aa corrections, different contrast, and you weren't using a buffer shade on the flesh ramp but you had it in the hair.

EDIT: had a duplicate colour, how noobish of me. Also, PURE EVIL:

(http://www.locustleaves.com/EVIL.gif)
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: 100%Polyester on August 06, 2005, 03:36:44 am
 :o Arrrgh the brilliance.  You must teach me...how? :P I'm just loving those edits. 
Quote from: ptoing
I also added some antialiasing, mainly at the hairline, the mouth and the eyes, and last of all i added some hightlights to the hair.
Yea, ive never been able to antialias, any pointers?  The highlights are a nice touch aswell.

Quote from: Helm
...and you weren't using a buffer shade on the flesh ramp but you had it in the hair.
Buffer shade? Flesh ramp?.....now I'm all confused  ???  You obviously know what your talking about unlike me :P  Can anyone explain these terms for me?
Title: Re: Chucky wants to play (Hi btw)
Post by: Helm on August 06, 2005, 05:19:45 pm
a colour ramp is a number of colours of roughly the same hue (*there's a lot to discuss on an advanced level here, about ramp tinting, colour ramp mixing etc) which you use to shade something, from very dark, near black, to very bright, near white colours. The game boy palette, for example, of 4 colours, is a colour ramp. Theoretically, pure black, and pure white, only the two of them, are a colour ramp too :P In this case, the 'flesh ramp' I reffered to was the collection of colours you used to shade the face. And what I said was that there was one colour you had in the hair, that (given optimization) was useful as a buffer shade in the flesh shades too. You'll notice that I basically blended everything and created one ramp for whole of the sprite. It's a juggling act, to minimize colours used, and at the same time have an end result that doesn't look too 'muddy' or monochromatic, when you do this.

 And by buffer, I mean using a shade as an intermmediate step between two others, to smooth out selectively where this is needed. If I had pure white, and pure black, and one shade of gray, I'd use the shade of gray to buffer where I needed between the two to minimize the harshness. Buffering is different from Anti-aliasing in a very interesting way. Anti-alias mainly is applied to minimize the jaggy effect of pixel-art. To take away the 'blockage', really. Buffering isn't about that at all. Buffering is there to create gradients, from small to very large from one colour to another. The 'steps' might still be jaggy after you've buffered. Usually if the art style stands for it, and you want the gradients to be smoother still, and you don't mind the texture that it adds, you then dither from one shade to another...

The wiki will be a great thing.