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Messages - Lakelezz
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1
Pixel Art / Re: My Avatar Tradition
« on: September 09, 2015, 06:12:21 pm »
Hey 32! Thanks for taking your time to share your knowledge with me  :)

First of all great to hear you think the AA got better! Secondly though I have to disagree because I like the highlights a lot. I think it adds some more cool depth to it.
On the other hand I changed the straps. Actually originally it was only the yellow shade but it felt weird on the skin. Just like it would merge with it. However I like what how it works out this time.
Furthermore I tried to adjust the mouth once more. I also flipped the canvas and did some little changes - thanks for the tip. Specially because I always forget to do that  ???

In the end I decided to stop working on it! You can take a look at it on Pixel Joints' gallery: http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/97894.htm

Thanks for everyone helping me along this way! The amount of replies really impressed me  :o

 

2
Pixel Art / Re: My Avatar Tradition
« on: September 09, 2015, 12:25:34 am »
Thanks for all the replies and actually taking your time to help me! I really appreciate this.

The image is very nice. Sweet AA...at simple eyesight. But there have some places to check:



First is the red circle. In the center there's a little bulge. It feels like the jaw is very big on the sides and I'm sure that's not the case. A simple AA can fix it. Also, those red stains I put below the image were before a slight different yellow of the background, very imperceptible on simple eyesight. In this case, is not necessary to have it there, right?

And what @Joe said is right: don't overdue the AA. Often doing it very simple looks better.

Here is my fix. You can compare it. Mine is on the right.



Btw, I like the effect you made on the lips. That one was impressive.
Thanks for pointing out. I tried to fix these problems :)
Also happy to hear you like the lips! However I readjusted their rotation since the head is slightly tilted.

Had a stab at this, may be helpful:


Thanks for your effort, Wolfenoctis. Though your edit is a completly different style :o As a result I could not take much out of your edit :/

A lightbulb moment for me was when I was shown that perfect AA doesn't require a buffer pixel against every single pixel.
Another thing is, the foundation of good AA is a solid contour. You can't buff out a bad line with AA.
AA is really fun to get good at and makes images look immediately better. But try not to overdo it, in particular avoid having the buffer reach up to the next row as much as you can, and cut back in areas it's not needed as much (like the chin).
Perhaps you haven't considered this, but an interesting mental shift for me was: what if I'm not AAing from black to yellow, but yellow to black? What would an ideal yellow look like? This is in the same vein as negative space in drawing.
After you shift your perception to that, you can then switch back and forth regularly, working on that theoretical infinitesimal edge.



Also, great progress.
Thanks a lot for your insight into AA. The more ideas about it I get the better!

edit: oops just realised i was critiquing the wrong version  :-[
Oh, what version did you give critique for then?

I don't know if this is helping but:
Looking at it on smallest size the  top right and top left sides looks a bit weird
Although zooming in it starts looking right so I don't know what exactly is causing it

A bit of topic:
I'm shocked..
I underestimated the power of AA. I never thought the picture from Nov 2014 would only be 64x64
I guess I just learned something :D
Yes, I already tried reworking that! I am also happy to hear this could help to expand your view onto AAing :)!
Additionally thanks for taking your time to participate in this thread, too!

Personally, I think it's done and looks great.  The AA looks fine.  Add any more an it'll start to look blurry. 
Nice palette too.

Hehe, nice to hear that! Though I did not feel like it is done. It specially lacked more control on the AA which I tried to fix with my latest edit.

One thing that i see is that the face looks like it is looking slightly to screen right.  Generally in portraiture the space in front of the face should be slightly larger to enhance the composition.  If the resolution of you pixelling isnt set in stone i would recommend adding a few pixels in width to the right side of the canvas so as to make it not feel cramped.

It looks really good though and its super cool to see the improvement from a couple years ago and now.  :crazy:

The canvas size is set in stone, hehe. It is meant to become an avatar. Thus I need to restrict the size in order to use it on PJ.
Happy to hear your think there is an improvement!

Here is my current version:



- I added highlights on the hair!
- The palette has been readjusted, specially the value of the darkest colour has been lowered.
- Multiple AA changes!
- Small hair alternations has been done!
- Tried rotating mouth and eyepatch according to the small tilted head.

However I am bit unsure if not the tilting on the eyepatch is a bit too strong. Furthermore it's strap seems to be a bit hard to do well for me. First I tried making it all in the grey colour but then it looked uglier instead of more consistent. Any suggestions or do you even think it is good as it is?


3
Pixel Art / My Avatar Tradition
« on: September 04, 2015, 02:21:09 pm »
Hello Pixelation-community :)

I am currently working on my avatar tradition which started on December 2013. The tradition is about pixeling Mei Misaki from the mange and anime "Another".



These three pieces represent the stages of own pixel art career.
Even thought the first two pieces have 45 and 44 colours, the third one already limited itself to 11 colours.

Furthermore the canvas size adjusted to it's aimed purpose. Thus the latest one - November 2014 - marks my early months on PixelJoint.
As a result the canvas size increased to 64x64 to make the piece "avatar-viable".

However I started working on a new piece for this avatar tradition.



The palette has 7 colours and the canvas size is still 64x64

Right now I am struggling a little bit with the AAing of the hair. If you have any tips for me, I would greatly appreciate them.

Lastly, thanks for taking your time to read this thread.




4
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] My Space Mermaid
« on: August 16, 2015, 12:45:58 am »
amazing O: can't wait to see the finished piece
I personally like the one pixel stars
Also I think the color experiment looks like the planet is giving more light then in the first picture which I think is good

I love love the star group on the left top, I hope you keep it ^^
Thanks Pusty! Good to hear your impression, specially about the one-pixel-big-stars! I will keep in mind what you said about the colour experiment. Though I will rework the palette later on. Right now I rather focus on the composition.

This looks awesome love the outerspace feel.  To answer some of your questions the nebulae in the first one is the one that i personally prefer, I dont think the quick transition looks as good and i find you lose some of the vastness of space with this.  The one pixel stars are not too stray i think they looks good.

A quick note on the composition is that space is very vast and i find this isnt very well conveyed because the piece is a bit crowded.  If the size was amped up a bit and the objects were maybe all put slightly closer together in one corner with the rest being empty space I think it would perform very well.

On the colours of the mermaid.  The mermaid is clearly the subject of the piece so if you are willing to change the monochromatic colour scheme to something else i believe it would work very well to choose a different colour for the mermaid , a complimentary to blue or purple would work best so yellow or orange (or both).  Its completely up to you how the colours go because just about any colour could look pretty cool.

One more enigma that you are currently dealing with is the problem of the hair and the tail.  The mermaid doesnt look as much like a mermaid because it doesnt read well.  At first glance it is a bit tough to tell what the creature is because the hair and tail mess up the silhouette.  There are also a few very minor anatomical issues but they arent really a problem.

In my edit i tried to find a solution to the weird silhouette but i really couldnt.  Ill leave it up to you because you have the creative license to do so.  I did a lazy edit in photoshop to cheatsy doodle around a bit with levels and the clone stamp tool.  Also with what i said i had to change the resoltion that you set which is a bit of a no no in this case but i just wanted to convey my shitty ideas.

Edit: (PS mermaid colour, I have no clue but preferably not pink, maybe blue would look cool)

First of all thanks for taking your time to try to express your ideas with an edit. As a result I tried adding a new shade to let the nebula fade out more easily.
Additionally I made a change to the canvas: Left and upper part are now bigger than before (180×180 instead of 140×140).

Nonetheless I am not sure about breaking the monochrome scheme. Specially because I am not a big fan of using the complimentary in this case. Since a usual pale skin would not work anyway (I assume), I rather stick with this for now.

Well the tail was at that position to make the pose more interesting. Maybe I have to rethink that.
What anatomy issues did you find?

wow with more space it looks soo much better :O
I would love to see a proper resized version in such a size or something like that !

I bet if you resize it to a 16:9 (or in some cases 4:3) resolution it would make an amazing desktop background O:
(but thats most likely not what you are aiming for lol)

Haha, no, I am not aiming for a new desktop background. I rather would not take one of my own pieces since they are not good enough for my personal taste anyway.

nice piece.
a few initial impressions...

i like the dark patches of nebula but the brighter bits feel a bit too opaque more like some kind of plasticy goo than gas.

pose:
i feel like the pose is a bit awkward assuming her tail is following her movement (feeling of movement making things interesting), its like she's flowing one way then suddenly twisting the other way.
that's probably not an issue except that her tail is curved and flowing then her arms are stiff and straight which looks off to me.
then the flow of the hair doesn't seem to be helping either.

priority:
surely the mermaid is primary focal point and most naturally that would be the face first.
the value (brightness) and contrast of the planet is much too high compared to the mermaid so it is too dominating.
it doesn't help the scene is basically monochromatic, if that is ur intention then u must control the values and contrast accordingly.
otherwise check out some other colour schemes like analogous (google it) where u can just shift the some of the hues of the mermaid to increase its priority.
u can (and should) still share colours between ramps and all u need is perhaps a small hue bounce somewhere in the mermaid ramp to make it pop out of the scene.
and/or u have the option to add a secondary light source such as some gold rim lighting from a nearby sun.
of course she could be magically self-illuminating too.
whatever u do get some more light onto the face imo and thin out the highlight on the breasts they kinda look like headlights atm.


Hey Decroded!
Let me clear up the pose-concept: She came from above. Her tail shows the direction from which she flew. As you can see, it was in a curvy way. In the end she entered a bit of atmosphere and "hovered" above/within it. That is why her arms are like that, to keep up the balance.
If there is anything to improve this idea, I would be really thankful. Originally the planet was even tinier thus I increased it's size before I started this thread.

Secondly about the planet which I can partly understand. As I mentioned about the pose-concept in this post already, the planet is right under her. At least that is what I want to convey. The planet shall be her light source thus her (already very reflective) scales are being lit.

Also about the colours: Well, I am honestly not sure at all right now. I like monochrome palettes a lot. Though I am not quite sure how to control the values in the manner you described. I tend to use 8-colour-monochrome-palettes during my original content pieces which makes it hard for me to manage this palette which seems to expand above it (13 coloures at the moment).
Any tips for my struggle?

I tried to fix some of the mentioned points:




I have done some more edits, especially on the planet:



Any suggestions how I could make the mermaid more pretty? I feel like her face is a bit gloomy :/



I made some changes to her hair, eyes and breasts.



I tried use more clusters on the hair and additionally cleaned up the colour mess.

Then I tried to clean up her face. Furthermore I added eyes even though I know the space for a proper reading of them is quite small.

Lastly there is my attempt of adding nipples and correcting the distance of each breast according to each other.
Nonetheless adding proper nipples is not that easy for me, any suggestions to make them read better?

Also I am not sure about the planet's AAing. Do you think it bands too much?



Many changes!

First of all the skin has been recoloured because using the background colour in does not feel good to me. Additionally I tried to make her look less scary thus brighter colours were just the right decision in my point of view.

Secondly I tried to clean up the hair way more. Therefore I had to redefine the clusters.

Last but not least: I tweaked the palette a bit and finally removed many useless colours. My result for now is 11 colours and of course no transparency.



Is there anything small I could change? I do not want to redo everything nor change the concept. A lot of time was spent into this piece and I just do not feel like I learned a lot from it during the last days. Thus finishing this piece and moving on to another would be something I highly appreciate.
Nonetheless I still look forward your critique of course :)



I did some edits on her nipples and tail according to someone's feedback.
Toned down the nipples to make them look less sharp and long. Also the transition from on the tail got fixed one could say. I used the background colour on some areas which caused a strong contrast. Now I used some less dark colour on it which has been used on other spots on the tail already.
Additionally the hair has been reworked a bit.





Thanks for the feedback!
I finished my piece - for everyone who is curious you can check it our here: http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/97673.htm


5
Pixel Art / [WIP] My Space Mermaid
« on: August 14, 2015, 11:45:15 pm »
Howdy Pixelation!

Let us dive right into my new WIP-thread and tackle another piece which came up into my mind:

Here goes the current original piece:



While I did a little experiment - not sure about it though:



There is still a lot to be done on this piece thus I would love to read your suggestions and critique!

Especially hearing as you read this picture would be interesting and helping. How does the background read for example? What do you see? What brings up questions/issues?

By the way, the in the upper left group of stars is representing the star constellation of the the flying fish. It might be removed - I just liked the idea and the interpretation of the star group fits the general scene.

Do you have an idea about the space composition?
Should I tone down the nebula or stars? Originally they were brighter so I am watching this with the wrong eyes right now I guess.

Are the one-pixel-stars too "stray"?

I am not sure whether this is a rather bad way of handling it and if they even read as those. I probably need to tone them down a bit more.

Any suggestions about the mermaid's colours?

I once thought about colouring her like pale (maybe a bit tanned) human skin looks.
Though I came up with no solution actually fitting into this piece's general palette.

If you have anything else to mention, feel free to do so of course!

Thanks for reading my thread!

6
Pixel Art / Re: Life Is Strange - Fanart
« on: April 29, 2015, 08:27:47 pm »
I appreciate your feedback and did some edits in the last days.

This is just the current step and it will of course not be the last one. There are still things to be improved.



All the following perspectives are from the viewer:

- The horizon's colour order has been changed back (dark -> bright instead of bright -> dark)
- Nature in the back got changed
- Pine tree got changed and is my greatest enemy at the moment
- The left shoulder has now the same length as the right one
- Her torso and neck are now more detailed
- The bag's holder has a new texture/lighting
- The right eye has been updated and is brighter
- White dots were added inside the eyes
- Her clothes' lighting got changed
- Small stuff

Well the pine tree is my biggest issue at the moment : / I have no clue what I could do with the surface on which the photo is taped on. A texture would be too distracting but I might change the shadows in the corners.
Additionally in my opinion I have to improve the grass, too.





New progress which is still not fully done. One idea is to make the very far of the ocean brighter but the nearby water dark. Additionally I will try to make the waves smaller and smaller the more far the distance moves.
The shoulder got redefined in terms of lighting to reduce the perception of a flat character. Therefore I tried adding more volume to the face, too. Still not very happy with that.

The pine tree might be reworked completely soon. Though I have no clue how handle it. Right now it is just a terrible mess of unreadable pixels in my opinion.



New attempt on the pine tree.

I tried to clean up the tree and correct the shapes.
The old one was too noisy and uncontrolled thus I could not bear looking at it anymore.





New updates!



The ocean got changed again.
Trying to make them becoming smaller nearby the horizon. Additionally the very far of the ocean is now a prettier.

The grass area has been adjusted.
Flower pattern are more consistent and feel more organized to me.
Some small edits on the grass area, too.

I added a few trees onto the hills in the very far. Alternatively I tried using a darker brown behind them to indicate some more pine trees but I did not like it that much.

Max's hair has been slightly changed. Some missing AA was added, too.

My last point is the front pine tree next to Max. I changed a few pixels on it.





First of all I tried to increase the shadow around the nose!
Additionally the background on which the photo is being taped on has been reworked.
Last but not least some highlights on the ocean has been added.

Still not sure what to do with the shades in each corner of the taped background, though.





I call this done.

The reasons are quite simple: This piece taught me enough and I do not feel any progress neither in the piece itself nor in my development.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate your help :)

I uploaded it to the pixeljoint gallery and deviantArt already:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/94644.htm
http://lakelezz.deviantart.com/art/Max-Caulfield-Life-Is-Strange-531640243

7
Pixel Art / Re: Life Is Strange - Fanart
« on: April 19, 2015, 12:40:58 am »
Thanks Decroded! I tried to fix everything mentioned but the eyes. I will leave them as they are for now.

This update contains some very experimental steps. Focus onto the water of course:



I tried so many different ways of pixeling the water. Nonetheless they all were not that successful. It is hard to handle the spume and the snow, too.
Any tips for the water in general?

Additionally this version contains an update of the background and grass.
I might undo the grass edit though. Oh, and the lips are smiling a bit now :)



Update on the water - added new colours:




Updates on the waves and some smaller stuff:





Some super experimental update. I am not even sure if I like the changes or if the tree, and grass, and hills were better in the last few updates.
I am simply missing another person's view on this :/ Could somebody give me some feedback about that?
The dark part of the tree might be too strong, maybe I need a new colour for the green.



Additionally I am very unhappy with the ocean. Any tips for me?



Since I disliked the water I decided to redo it.
Here is my current version:



Sadly I am still not happy :/

Edit: Some cleaning on the last update.

8
Pixel Art / Re: Life Is Strange - Fanart
« on: April 17, 2015, 12:34:08 am »
Nope, she is not taking a selfie. Somebody else is taking a picture of her :)

9
Pixel Art / Life Is Strange - Fanart
« on: April 16, 2015, 12:37:21 am »
Dear Pixelation-Forum :)

This thread is about the game "Life Is Strange" which definitely climbed my heart within seconds.

The concept for my fanart is the following: Providing an instant camera photo taped onto a surface. The photo features the main character in front of an environment.



The right white elements are pretending to be snow, nonetheless I am not happy with it at all nor have I clue how to make them working. Maybe they have to be removed though. As a result there are multiple attempts on diverse elements of this piece.

Any suggestions about the ocean? It is still work in progress but I am not sure whether I should use more colours to describe the highlights.
The surface on which the photo is also pretty boring, I might need to change that. Nonetheless it is much more neutral this way. Well, I will see.

I am looking forward for your ideas and feedback.



Ok, some snow edits.



Additionally I tried to change the secondary colour to some blueish tone. Though I had to add a new colour for this.





10
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Practicing outline-style
« on: March 14, 2015, 01:12:40 am »
In my point of view I learned a lot. Specially when I compare with what I started and then ended up with.
Your suggestions of down sampling it / redoing it on smaller sizes might be a quite interesting though.

This is my current version:



I changed/removed clusters, AA lines, sleeves, shades, hair, hair highlights, jagged lines, and some more minor stuff.



Here we go - the pre-final edit:



I updated the eyes based on this reference:



Any final suggestions before I publish this piece?



I published the piece :)
Thanks for everyone who helped me!

Take a look at the final piece:

pixel joint:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/93357.htm

deviantArt:
http://lakelezz.deviantart.com/art/Aoba-Tsugumi-Kannagi-520429431

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