Pixelation
Critique => Pixel Art => Topic started by: Corinthian Baby on January 14, 2009, 07:12:39 am
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Just wanted to get some opinions/critiques on this one. Just doing it for fun, kind of practicing volumes/frank miller's style of dark high contrast grizzly faces. Also may need help with foreshortening his armcannon.
(http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2982/lennusintesiatis3pt1.png)
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Ah man 0 replies is never good. Well, here's an update:
(http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/667/lennusintesiatis4px1.png)
Gave him a more defined body but don't wanna mess with lighting too much to keep it mysterious.
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I think!
...the reason for no replies is that your forms aren't 100% clear to begin with, so people aren't precisely sure what to look at or what they're looking at. An' noone wants to be so offensive to post "uhh... what is it?"
By no means does it look bad, just some forms are unclear to me, particularly what I assume is his nose (trunk-like thing?), and the many other similar appendages sprouting from its head.
Also, to be entirely honest I'm not sure where the armcannon you mention is.
I feel as if subtle hue shifts to show the viewer that X is a different material than Y would go far.
It -does- look very cool, though. I'm lookin' forward to progress :)
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The overall messiness bothers me, the random pixel look should be discarded for a more controlled approach, in my opinion.
Also, I believe the "thou" in the last line should be "thee", grammatically speaking. I also find it odd that he uses such archaic and proper language while still managing to throw in an "ain't". I'd suggest changing the last line to "I am not yet done with thee!"
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Hmm, well his speech is supposed to be a combination of old english and various types of slang, but I'll change it to thee, if that's more correct. With the messy look, it's still a wip and kind of style choice. His head is more or less done, so I'm hoping the final product will be as refined as that, where it's rigid but also kind of shaped with volumes.
The armcannon is the big circle thing. I tried to make it so it would be foreshortened and pointed right at the viewer, but apparently people don't get it. I may have to introduce some more colors on a similar spectrum to make the forms more clear. I think it has like 8 colors so far, maybe a faded green similar to the blue.
There are wires coming out of his head hooked up to his gun, there's a missle attached to his left arm, and yeah, that's his nose.
Any help about forming the textures (hair/fur for face, and metal for his armor) would be appreciated.
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thee is correct for the objective form of the informal second person, while thou is corrective in the subjective/nominal case (as the first part) :
I, thou, you, him, her, us, ye, they - subjective
me, thee, you, he, she, we, you, them - objective
my, thy, your, his, her, our, their - genitive
mine, thine, yours, his, hers, ours, yours - possessive
slang can work but you may want to keep it more consistent. For instance, "is" came into fashion for the third person after "thou" fell out of fashion : "There beeth" would be the working term. Ain't, as a contraction, is also modern, but am and not were both words of the time so it could slide. "Why" is also modern, in the past "wherefore" fulfilled the role of interrogative and "whereby" established cause. "Why" at the time was an invocation used to indicate an interrogative phrase and did not serve further grammatical purpose.
it is also a modern/informal thing to include qualifying phrases which affect the subject after the object, which cure alludes to intentionally or unintentionally in his moving of "yet," for what that's worth.
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Even knowing what it's supposed to be, I cannot stop seeing the perfect circle of the arm cannon as two-dimensional. It would have to be on the same level with my eyes to look that way, placing it at the center of the image. (Even then, it would most likely miss the dead-center of my field of view.)
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interesting how you're using the american ain't combined with old english... think about that :p
and yes, the overperfect armcannon which is most certainly out of perspective, doesn't only look wrong, it also attracts more attantion than anything else
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old english...
Early Modern English.
Aside from an english lesson I don't have much to offer other that to second the crits already given - hazy forms, the overly round gunbarrel (even if it's just sketched it will still come out direct when you pixel) and, gernally contributing to the above - perhaps overzealous darkening of the canvas.
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Haha guys, thanks for the history lesson but don't worry about the old english. The way this character speaks a mix between old english and modern slang, it's not supposed to make sense.
About the arm canon, why wouldn't it be a perfect circle? I can play with the positioning to give it a kind of more in your face vibe, and maybe color in lighter at top, and work it from there into darkness to make it look like it's protruding foward in space. Was looking for ref pics of the perspective to make it easier:
(http://images.quickblogcast.com/3/1/2/3/2/131740-123213/gun_pointed.jpg)
Looking at this, the barrel is the lightest part and it's thicker and placed in the center.
Overzealous darkening of the canvas. Hmm, I could try a not pure black background to make it a bit more clear, or lighten up the colors in general, I guess it depends on what monitor you see it on.
Here's a quick edit/sketch of how it might look like that:
(http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/6861/lennusintesiatis4nc6.png)
And here's a very quick isolation of the character though I like the black more. It gives him a kind of shrouded in darkness type look, and is reminesecnt of ilkke's alexander the great.
(http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1962/lennusintesiatis5ha9.png)
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doesn't really depend on the monitor- i've checked this out from several monitors now and it's always too dark. don't lighten the background though, unless you want mud - increase contrast and edge definition instead.
in addition, you're not really using light to define important forms, it's just sorta scattered around. this deepens the clarity issues.
you don't have the perspective to pull off in-your-face, you have to work with a lot more foreshortening for that to happen. as it is, the gun looks like a giant tiddlywink set on top of the canvas.
Haha guys, thanks for the history lesson but don't worry about the old english. The way this character speaks a mix between old english and modern slang, it's not supposed to make sense.
Early Modern English. Old English is not readable without extensive study and can easily be identified by an abundance of "þ"s and "ð"s and "æ"s. Your bit cannot be directly translated into old english, as the grammar is vastly different. it would first need to literally read something like "purpose mine it be, therefor yet you life yours have. completed not I am to you!" before you could even translate, and i don't know the words for life, purpose, or to complete.
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Yeah I guess old english would be like Beowulf and stuff like that.
Here's an update. I tried to highten the contrast and make the forms cleaner/clearer:
(http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/230/lennusintesiatis6yy9.png)
Still not ready to tackle the arm canon, need to study some more for it.
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Yeah I guess old english would be like Beowulf and stuff like that.
Here's an update. I tried to highten the contrast and make the forms cleaner/clearer:
(http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/230/lennusintesiatis6yy9.png)
Still not ready to tackle the arm canon, need to study some more for it.
Hey Corinthian Baby, I was just looking over your post and decided to make an edit to your art as it's a good start but a little dark and a little messy.
I did a really quick edit to show you how this could look with a palette change and also smoothed out a few areas to show you that you don't need to use every color everywhere ( i've been told this before and it's great advice ). I also placed the gun for you, although I have a feeling helm would be the best person to really show you a great way to place it as he is a comic illustrator :)
Anyway, here's the wip, I wanted to do more, but i'll leave the fun for you :)
(http://www.mindcrank.com/edit1.png)
Oh I almost forgot, I also changed the text, because honestly, its making the character seem wimpy, he looks like he would say something tough before he shoots ya. Also stole the colors I used from ndschristies bust. If you're not aiming for low colour I would suggest maybe 2 more colours.
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That is a sick edit dude. I will use this pallet and see what I can come up with.
I know there is like this thing about using people's edits, so is it ok to work off yours, or should I use it as a ref and do it myself?
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I really do not like that palette, dogmeat, but I think the positioning of the gun and the text are perfect. The new palette looks, hmm, the only way I can think of describing it is "boogery", as in made of boogers.
The original palette I think it not bad, it looks like the dude is popping out of the darkness.
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I'll have to agree; the original palette is much better.
However, I think Dogmeat has some great advice about where some of the highlights should be, such as the top of the ear opposed to the bottom. He also shows a good way of shading above the eyes, and his edit on the arm is more volumetric.
Good work so far; that said, I think studying Dogmeat's edit for the technique rather than the palette would be sound growth for you artistically. I'll be waiting for updates. :)
-Dex
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I really do not like that palette, dogmeat,
I must also agree, it just seems too busy.
How about something like this?
(http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/3429/palleditpz8.png)
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That is a sick edit dude. I will use this pallet and see what I can come up with.
I know there is like this thing about using people's edits, so is it ok to work off yours, or should I use it as a ref and do it myself?
Don't edit the edit. Place the pixels on your original yourself.
I agree that the palette is a bit messy, so add a a few colours to your old palette and continue from there
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So I tried to work in a few colors from the above edit and make the volumes closer to dogmeat's edit:
(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/340/lennusintesiatis7gw7.png)
Still a bit rough but it is getting up there.
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I think what confuses me most about the gun-arm is that he seems to have no reason for pointing it anywhere, let alone straight at the camera.
If the character were aiming at something, he'd be looking at what he's aiming at. If he's not aiming at something, he's prolly gonna have that big chunk of metal hanging out in some sort of relaxed position, not holding it up aimlessly at nowhere.
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I think he is pointing it at the player, or the character, and the player is just in first person perspective.
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Yeah that's right, he's pointing at the player/someone would be looking right at him. I don't think the stance is really a problem here.
(http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3623/lennusintesiatis7am7.png)
Dunno what else to do with this, it's lookin pretty good.
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you say you want to bring up the highlights dramatically, so do so, use those light colors from your edited palette to your advantage they're there use them
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Hey guys I know this is an old as thread but I finally came back to this. Added some text, I just want some last minute comments on the text, perspective, shading etc. before I submit it.
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5884/lennusintesiatis7.png)
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The shape of the "S" just isn't cutting it for me. It looks very hand drawn, as opposed to the other characters in the text being very roman. Also, the first three letters have no shadow, while the U is almost completely shadow and the S partly. It really drags down readability. I wouldn't make the bridges of the N's solid either.
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I'll give you some comments on the creature, if you allow me: to me, the barrel looks too flat. If you notice, in the picture you posted earlier (wherein you hold the weapon), the end of the barrel is almost white when compared to the rest of the image. It's also somewhat blurred, which gives the illusion of tri-dimensionality (I'm probably wrong, but I suppose Velázquez was the one that did this). Also, the head seems to be a little too big in proportion with the torso, but then again, in human standards. Is the body in front view or more in 3/4ths view? Its (or his) left metal shoulder-blade seems irregularly bigger than this right one, unless it's the original intent. Perhaps you could also play around with the pallette to make it less monochromatic? Good work, regardless :)
Edit: now that I look at it again, it seems that the head is all right. Maybe the neck is too long, or the head-features altogether make me uncomfortable.
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Thanks for the crits guys, I'll try to cook up an edit. Lemme address some issues:
I'll redo the letters to make them have no shadows, and the inbetween lines on all lines within the letter.
That's not me in the ref pic.
I see what you mean about the head/neck/torso. I think I will make the neck a little shorter and try to beef up his torso. Even though he is an alien he still has relatively human proportions. I don't want to mess with the face, because I rather like how it came out.
The thing about the difference in the should blades, is that one side is a rocket-launcher, and the other side is just a normal part of the armor.
About the colors, I like the monochromatics of it because it brings out an oldschool feel, but I am open for suggestions. Just as a note, Lennus, the creature, is brown, and his armor is olive grey, and the rocket is purple.
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This piece lacks a lot of polish to call it done imo. Right now it's very sketchy/oekaki in nature. I don't see this as pixel art, since it's to far from being pixel perfect. On most parts I can literally see the brush strokes in their unrefined form.
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Well, first of all, this image needs to be refined. Thats really your biggest problem from what I can tell. You got to put in that pixel level detail for it to really come together otherwise, like Gil said, its not going to be finished.
Another thing- you got to show part of the arm as to not confuse the viewer. Otherwise its just going to look like a floating circle. Also, the gun needs to look more metallic. Heres a rough edit to illustrate what I mean:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3458/3350502766_95071bf052.jpg?v=0)
You don't necessarily have to show the top part of the arm like I've done, it'll work just as well if you show the bottom.
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Here is an edit, based on yours:
(http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8577/lennusintesiatis9.png)
I tried to get into the face to make it less sketchy, but for the body and stuff it's still really messy because it's not final I'm going back in and changing the forms a bit to get the perspective right.
While I agree that I need to go in and really smoothen it out, I don't think it's fair to not call it "pixel art." And really I don't like the pretentious ideals of the phrase that this site supposedly keeps in order. Just because something is messy in style doesn't mean that someone didn't draw it with pixels.