Thanks!

The low colours in each area are more likely a result of inexperience rather than a conscious choice. I tried a few methods with the trees and settled on this as looking most bark-like, but the whole thing was a compromise between having them fade into the background through atmospheric perspective, giving them texture, and not having them distract from the foreground. I'd actually like to make stuff that looks as pixel arty as possible! That said, I wouldn't have chosen to make something this size if I wasn't committed to finishing off an old piece without resizing it. I doubt I'll do something this big again for a long time!

That edit looks great. I'd tried using all blue, and I think I mucked around with blue highlights at one point, but I never considered using the dark shade in there. It looks far less distracting (particularly with regard to the plants in the river) and also far more natural. I'll start working on a new version based on your advice later today. I don't have any specific foliage in mind (the only thing I've decided for sure is that the large flowers in her hair and in the water are white marigolds). Ideally it'll look vaguely European since the original painting is British and Hamlet is Danish, but I'm no plant expert.

Based on what you've said, do you think it's possible to render the trees with a greater level of detail? I don't want to get too sidetracked because of my deadline (self-imposed, admittedly), but I do worry that they look more like lino prints compared to Ophelia.

Hi all! It's been a little while. I've been doing smaller pieces since my last post, generally for Pixel Joint weeklies, and I didn't feel I had much to offer crit-wise with a lot of recent posts. That said, I'm pleased to see that Pixelation seems to be a bit livelier than it was last year and I'll try to contribute more.

I'm currently working on a piece that I started back in 2008. It was going to be the first thing I posted here when I originally intended to get into pixel art, but I wasn't able to finish it and, for various reasons, I didn't do any art for a decade until I joined here last year. I started it in my teens as an homage to J W Waterhouse's Ophelia, which is one of my favourite paintings. At the time I didn't just want to do a study, so it's my version of it (although the subject is the same, so it's intended to tell the last moments of her story from Hamlet).

My intention is to finish this for Thursday 6th (fortunately I'm off work quite a bit before then) to mark a year of being a Pixelation and Pixel Joint member. All of this is WIP but I mostly feel okay about plugging away at it except for the foliage. I can't find a method that looks quite right. Here's the version that I think is looking best:

Ultimately, the more distant foliage that I've done in blue will use the same style as the nearer parts, but I haven't had time to fill that in and I'm already doubting that this is the right look.

An earlier version with a different, and I think even worse, approach is here.

Over the past year, I feel I've learned that I want a simple approach (i.e. easily recognisable forms, nothing too detailed to distract from the subject, and nothing noisy) and also something that shows some intention behind it, but landscapes are very much not my thing.

Here are a couple of references that have a similar look to the one I'm going for: one / two.

Like I say, there's a fairly tight deadline for this which is why I'm looking for such specific advice. I am always interested in broader crits, but I may not be able to implement everything this time round (and I've already had a round of feedback on an earlier version over at the PJ Discord). There are some things which I'm married to at this stage: the overall composition isn't changing (I will add in some leaves for the trees once the ground cover is sorted), and adding colours might be a bit awkward this far in.

If anyone's interested, this is how it looked in 2008.

I dunno, I reckon he has reasonably prominent cheekbones in other images, though that's not so relevant since it isn't Richard Sorge anyway! The character sounds really interesting. Is it set in the 60s? That seems plausible from his age.

Edit:
I did a second version because I think the mouth also needed to be wider. I also darkened the skin around the eyes to give the sockets more depth and suggest a bit of wrinkling.

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Original post:

Out of interest, is the character intended to be Richard Sorge or does he just have the right look? Just asking to know whether a close resemblance is necessary and also because it influences the clothes. I got the impression from the tie width and cut of the jacket that the character was 1960s but, if it's Sorge, a 40s look would mean wider lapels and a much wider tie. Either way, there are some other good reference photos of Sorge just on his Wikipedia page, which are at angles more similar to your picture.

I've done a little edit:


The main thing I did was make the face longer because I think that's one of his defining features. I also moved the mouth down from the nose and increased the length of the chin a bit because the mouth should be about halfway between the nose and the bottom of the face. I also tried to give the nose a bit more volume because I thought it looked slightly flat.

The other main differences are that I pulled the hair back a bit because he has a high forehead, the widening of the body, and the straightening of the arm. The elbow is around the waist if your arm hangs straight down, so you wouldn't see a bend in it that high up. That said, there's a decent amount of empty space above the character so you could probably move him up and keep the bent arm which I like as far as the character design goes.

I'm looking forward to the next version of this because I think he's an interesting looking character. Could you tell us a bit about him?

I saw this on PixelJoint and thought it was a good "first" piece (I saw that you'd described it more as the first polished piece). I hadn't commented over there because I wanted to post some small crits.

There's a lot to like about this. I think some of the details you've put in there are really good. I particularly like the visible roof beams and the chainlink fence. The sofa and TV on the deck is also a nice detail that adds the feeling of a story to the image. These aren't just random items, but people live (or have lived) in this world.

This is a bit of a dirty edit because the main shadow is done with transparency, but that was because I'm not experienced enough to recolour all of the grass and ground texture. The other shadows should all be using the same palette though. I started using the transparency everywhere for speed, and then filled in the easier areas, so forgive me if some have slipped through.



I haven't touched much but I thought the scene would look more interesting with more dramatic lighting. I've moved the sun round to the top right so the shadow are cast into the scene and just worked from there. The house and the deck were shaded in your original image, but the blocks, sofa and TV were all looking flat. I also brought the shadows in at the edges of the roof beams just to suggest they were sitting below the tiles.

I wasn't sure about the light outlines around the TV and the sofa, so I made them consistent with the dark outlines elsewhere. I think that makes them look more a part of the scene.

As far as the edit goes, that's about it: a bit more depth and volume to the scene to make it pop a bit more.

Other things that I think would elevate it further are having a more distinct roof tile texture (at the moment, they're the same as the bricks only smaller) and tidying the grass up a bit. I don't have the expertise to advise you there, but it's currently a little noisy. I know it's possible to render unkempt, long grass in a more controlled fashion and that it's not very helpful to just say to do that, but that's the best I've got.  It would look nice to have a grass texture applied to the whole ground with the longer tufts coming out of it. You could also rough up the edges of the path that leads to the stairs to show nature encroaching.

Hopefully some of that is helpful, even if it's just seeing another person's thought process about the same piece. I'm looking forward to your next picture!

EDIT: Nearly forgot to say but, rather than uploading the image as an attachment, it's easier for us to view it if you host it elsewhere (Imgur is pretty much standard round these parts) because the forum has a built-in zoom function. Clicking zooms on and ctrl-clicking zooms out. You can embed an image by clicking the little Mona Lisa image when you're typing up a post and then pasting in the image location