Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: official-neosoft on November 02, 2008, 02:12:31 pm
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Hi,
almost all pieces of art I make are getting critique: PILLOWED
I didn't know what pillowed was. Later I figured it out ( a little ).
(http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/7592/alienpracticefh5.gif)
This is an aliën I made, I wanted to make it non-pillowed. Is this fine? ( It's not about a beautiful piece, it's about the shading )
Thank you,
Official-NeoSoft
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Heh... unfortunately, its still pillowed.
Look at the shading on this guy (http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/specials/aliens/alien.jpg)
See how the light changes on the different planes on his face? Here's an example (http://www.philippefaraut.com/images/tools/planes.jpg) of what I mean by "planes of the face". See how the light plays off of the planes? The ones facing the light are bright, while the others are dark? This is a perfect way to add depth. Right now, everything in your piece is just sort of... round. The only thing that stands out as being not part of a gradient curve is the eyes.
Try giving your guy some definition, some jaw bones, some pecks. Take a look at the skeletal structure of the face and the musculature of the body. This guy may not be human, but a lot of the basic parts will still apply.
Hopefully this helped :)
stray...
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Too much dithering. Don't dither the whole piece, use dither savingly. IMO dithering should be used when:
- Flat colour areas are just a bit TOO flat
- You want to liven up the piece here and there
- You want to convey slight changes in form, small bumps and curves and so on.
No hue shift. You're just using different values of the SAME green and red. Also, using shilghtly different shades can occasionally do the job that dithering would do but would most likely look much more interesting.
The light/dark areas just run from dark to light without actually bringing up any forms, so it looks very flat.
So, all in all, use the various techniques to sculpt out forms and stucture, don't use dithering, shading, hue shift etc. just for their own sake.
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A big improvent over your older work, It isn't pillow shaded :D.
I know this was an experiment to see if you could create something without pillow shading, but there are a number of other things wrong with this.. Sorry for the *reallly* quick, sloppy/lazy edit:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/tumble_weed/alienpracticefh5-EDIT.png)
*You have over-dithered this, quite a bit, remember dithering can also creates a rough, brittle texture. I don't think that was the type of texture you were going for.
*This is very saturated, try and lower the saturation on some of the colours. Right now most of your colours are at maximum saturation.
*Why have you cropped the image like this? Right now it looks as though you have chopped of part of his head.
*Try to work on a more neutral coloured background, it makes it much easier to select appropriate colours when your background isn't upstaging your foreground. Also, it's much easier to look at.
*Why have you chosen to outline only the front of the alien?
*This species seems to have some very weird anatomy, where are its joints? muscles? bones? Think about these things when creating any kind of creature. Even if it isn't human.
*Try and use hue shifting, right now you seem to be using pretty much the same hue for all shades.
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I tried to improve it, is this any better?
(http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8832/alienpractice3dn2.gif)
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The new one has TONS of it. The problem lies in the way you layer many low-contrast shades over each other. The shape of a shade should not run completely parallel to another one. Try making the alien with only 3 shades of green and 2 two of red, then I hope you'll see what I mean.
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Right now, you're shading as if there is no light source. Not every area has to go from dark to the lightest shade. Light hits an object in different intensities depending on the shape. So, I would suggest doing some studies of volumes, and the shapes in general.
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The new one has TONS of it. The problem lies in the way you layer many low-contrast shades over each other. The shape of a shade should not run completely parallel to another one. Try making the alien with only 3 shades of green and 2 two of red, then I hope you'll see what I mean.
I agree with him. You pillow shade because of you don't know how to shade correctly. Try seeking a tutorial.
You should try to modify your lineart, aliens don't have a flat head, i modify it.
Quick Edit:
(http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/4594/asdasdpl9.png)
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The new one has TONS of it.
Tons of what?
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Pillow shading of course, what were you working on again? :P You see, the image you create is flat. And it remains flat. You need to draw out it's volume!
Apart from that: your lines aren't very solid. There seems to be no thought behind it. There's no convincing anatomy or posing.
Dirty edit:
(http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/4747/47757719vr9.png)
Don't hit me if I've got errors
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but why this edit isn't pillowed? The only difference I see is less shading colors and no outlines ??? Yes and other texture but..?
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The edit looks pillowshaded to me too.
Shading is really really hard unless you have some sort of construction going on, so i did you a picture with construction using the simplest thing there is. A sphere :)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v697/huzba/alien_spheres.jpg)
Here i pretty much shaded a sphere over and over again around the alien. I got lazy and didn't finish the body, but you get the idea.
There's a warm direct light coming from where the alien is looking and there's blue ambient light.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v697/huzba/alien_shaded.png)
Try it out by drawing a few spheres and cubes. Once you get those down, start making cubes with smooth corners, eggs instead of spheres, cube half blended into a sphere and so forth. When you can do that with confidence, you can start combining them into pretty much anything!
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I tried a sphere with 2 light sources, am I heading the right direction?
(http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/6117/nonpillowpracticesphereln8.gif)
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More or less, try to not use much dithering, instead it's more difficult to shade using it.
Look at the edit of huZba, it's really cool, use dithering when you have only 2 bits or a little more, for the sphere, instead of using dithering you should try to get a color between the joint of the lighter color.
Greetings! lol
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Removed the dithering, better?
(http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/5058/nonpillowpracticespherewa5.gif)
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the problem I can spot there with the sphere is that you are pushing the highlight on the blueside too much to the middle. and thats one of the things of pillow shading. putting the brighter shade in the midle.
the highlight is where light reflects of the surface into the viewer's eyes the most. is not necessarily in the center of the object. it dependes on the position of the light and angle of the surface.
right now what you've got is a sort of need to put in all the shades before you get to the brighter one.
I did these long ago. not so say I know who to do it, but more of "it can work other ways too"
(http://kazuya.gamedev-pt.net/public_img/pixel/material.gif)
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The edit looks pillowshaded to me too.
True, but less. Try yours with lighting coming from the direct side. I'm curious on differencies on the way to take on the shading.
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My sphere, I ment to have the yellow light a little closer to us, so the light shines not at the edge of the sphere. And the red light farther away from us, if anybody knows what I mean? :y:
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(http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/5058/nonpillowpracticespherewa5.gif)
(http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13/tocky/neosoft-sphere.png)
Consider:
-where the light sources are.
-the angle at which the light hits each part of the object.
The white light hits your sphere as if it were a spotlight on a flat surface. It needs to hit it like a sphere.
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Hmmm... but if I look at those 2 I still like the top one better.. :-\
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Take a round ball and expose it to two lights (one a full light, the other a fill light, like you've done here). Tocky's is much more accurate I think you'll find.
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You will never be able to draw if you refuse to see.
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It's more accurate, that's true, but the second lightst color, it's so.. not nice.. i dunno look at it, the shape of the shadow..
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Forget about the shadow. Evaluate the piece as a whole rather than each part separately. Narrow your eyes and take a look. While both being pretty rough and sketchy, which one is more 3d ball-like? That's what matters more than single details.
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yeah ok.. I'll post new things sometime..