Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: fil_razorback on May 09, 2008, 11:18:51 pm
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I suppose every pixel artist has to make one at some point.
Many thanks to Beelketh for his lineart.
Here's the beasty :
Latest :See below
Old :
http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08196/drg3376.png
http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08196/drg515.png
http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08196/drg107.png
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Looks nice overall, but lacks definition.
The head bothers me the most -- It's very "flat" looking. The eye area is very plain, he has no teeth, etc. I think if you put some more detail in that area it would "pop" quite a bit more.
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Thanks a lot for your input. Hopefully it's fixed now.
(http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08196/drg515.png)
I'm still accepting comments, crits and suggestions (and even one liners) =)
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The fire looks pretty cool, I like the "texture" of it :)
I'm having some trouble reading what's going on with the dragon's left (our right) shoulder, is something on top of it? The left arm is also a bit too high if you want to make it appear that it's bearing weight on the ground.
The connection between the left leg and body seems a little thin.
The light source is a bit confusing in some areas, is the fire meant to be the only one, or is there another coming from the left?
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Thank you. I've tried to adress the criticism you leveled :
-I made the lantern which you couldnt read gold instead of iron and added according shading to the underneath shoulder
-I tried to broaden a bit the connexion between the body and the left but I'm not sure I understand well the problem. An edit could surely help.
-I hope I made the light cleaner. It was supposed to feature one general lightsource (top right) and three ambient ones (fire, lantern, invisible blue on the left).
I decided not to make the arm longer because it's already quite long and I wasnt planning to make the hand touch the ground.
Also, I edited the collar and added a chainlet =)
There we go :
(http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08196/drg3376.png)
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I made an edit of the previous version to fix a few things.
First of all, the neck looks broken, so I straightened the line from the shoulder to the head.
I moved the lantern so that you couldn't mistake it for part of the shoulder. The color change fixes that, but I liked the previous version better since it was cleaner. You had a few redundant colors there, though, with the slightly different blue shades.
The shading on the collar looks flat with the highlight so close to the edge.
The lighting seems inconsistent. I think mostly because you're using the flames as the most prominent light source, but without considering its color. I would go for a stronger, white light source, and only add a hint of yellow on the shoulder since flames usually don't give off that much light. I'd also work on the shape a bit more since it looks a bit more like glowing popcorn at the moment.
I removed all light coming from the secondary sources just to clean it up a bit. The broken lines were just adding noise. I'd tone it down a bit and move it a but further away from the edges to add a bit more volume.
The anatomy could use some work too. I moved the legs up a bit to make it seem more as if he's leaning on his arm.
Hope that'll give you some ideas. :)
(http://www.retinaleclipse.com/filedit.gif)
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Pfew, there were so many intersting things in your edit that I didnt know where to start. You did an awesome job and I think it really helped me a lot.
Here's what I got after hours of studying your edit and tweaking mine.
(http://xs227.xs.to/xs227/08190/drg3970.png)
You really helped me a ton, especially about the collar, the tail (which new position was an idea from Adarias) and the damned arm. I feel guilty when I look at the three blobs I called an arm back then, but I also feel guilty for making a mere copycat of your version...since my knowledge of anatomy is close to zero.
As you can see, the only things I disagree with you about are the shading on the legs (I dont understand what you tried to do) and the lantern (just a matter of taste) which I like best on the right.
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Glad I could help! ;D
Well, I'm no anatomy expert myself, so the leg was just guesswork. I was hoping it would turn out to be somewhat accurate, though. :-[
Anyway, here's a more detailed look at what I probably should have done, Helm-style. :D I hope this is more accurate and helpful.
(http://www.retinaleclipse.com/fileditleg.jpg)
Oh, something about the way the light shines from the lantern bothers me a bit, and something I should have done in my edit was to add a shadow cast by the lantern. The lantern itself doesn't give off light, just the light inside it, so there shouldn't be a round area of highlight, but a more segmented one, if that makes sense.
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Two things! If you were to draw a skeleton for this sucker, I think you'd realise that the hips are absolutely massive and the legs don't necessarily attach to the hips anyhow.
Second, I'm forced to agree on the whole lamp thing (with arachne) as where it hangs right now suggests that the dragon's head is in front of its shoulder... which is hard, seeing as it's clearly looking over its shoulder. It causes some depth confusion, imo, and would be better off either being dragged over the shoulder or somewhere else entirely.
Those being said, love the pose you've got going, especially its right arm. It just screams "ROAR" :D
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Glad I could help! ;D
Well, I'm no anatomy expert myself, so the leg was just guesswork. I was hoping it would turn out to be somewhat accurate, though. :-[
Anyway, here's a more detailed look at what I probably should have done, Helm-style. :D I hope this is more accurate and helpful.
(http://www.retinaleclipse.com/fileditleg.jpg)
Oh, something about the way the light shines from the lantern bothers me a bit, and something I should have done in my edit was to add a shadow cast by the lantern. The lantern itself doesn't give off light, just the light inside it, so there shouldn't be a round area of highlight, but a more segmented one, if that makes sense.
I don't know if I entirely agree with your edit, Arachne. It seems to me like that would work better if his shoulder was up higher and his arm was less twisted, but if you look at his hand, you can see that its twisted to the side a bit. and I think the leg would be a bit more upward.
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b229/piedayman/dragon.png)
Then again I may just have no idea what I'm talking about...ah well. hope this helps in someway or another.
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His body shape is a bit blobby - can you get some references from T-rex skeletons and try drawing a sketch just as a skeleton first? I know you are using someone's lineart but can't you change it?
Also, he looks like he is spewing popcorn :)
When his bottom jaw is closed, woudln't it have a massive overbite?
I leave it to other people to advise on whether something needs to be done about the pallete.
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May I ask what you think your piece gains from the broken outlines/selout?
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I don't know if I entirely agree with your edit, Arachne. It seems to me like that would work better if his shoulder was up higher and his arm was less twisted, but if you look at his hand, you can see that its twisted to the side a bit. and I think the leg would be a bit more upward.
(http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b229/piedayman/dragon.png)
Then again I may just have no idea what I'm talking about...ah well. hope this helps in someway or another.
I think you're right about the leg, but if you hold your arm out straight in front of you and turn your hand 90 degrees away from you, you'll see that the arm really doesn't twist much. If you turn your hand the other way, however, it will. :)
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No new version yet but thanks for the good read.
I just want to pick up Helm's words because I am surprised no one pointed it out before. I think the broken outline/selout will make my piece blend with more smoothness on it's dark (near black) background ;D
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if that's all it's going to go against, why not have a near-dark bg on the sprite, instead you set it on transparent.
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mmm...the dragons are suposed to have scales, am i wrong?
i think if it isn't a water dragon or something like that it should have scales on his skin.
nice pose after all.
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Let's call him a water dragon then.
Anyway, I finally had a few moments to work on this piece again. I moved the lantern and redid the flames which were too much like popcorn :
(http://fil.razorback.free.fr/avatars/drg7.png)
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I think your flame looks wierd, so I did an edit:
(http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z142/Demon_Fire_X/drg7.png)
Don't know if its much better.
EDIT:
@smiker
a matter of opinion. to some they have skin, to some scales. In pixelart scales can get lookin' pretty ugly. This dragon could be either with skin or with really small scales.
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Detail such as scales can be suggested with colours, or (dither) patterns, if done right. The same goes for bricks on pixelated walls.