[WIP] 3 faces

[Pixelicious]

Hey all!

I made these 3 faces last night with a shooter game in mind. These are my very first "realistic" pixel images, I made them from scratch in the order of left to right.

- the one on the left is supposed to be your standard soldier/commando hero.

- guy in the middle is more bulky and I tried to get a sense of strength in him.

- last guy I wanted to be less muscular but still have strength, like a BEAR!

So, crits improvements etc are highly appreciated! I'm especially interested in how to get good skin tones/color. shading and anatomy advice is also welcome



First edit:

[surt]

Quick edit:

Note: I'm not strong on anatomy myself, so don't take anything I say on the matter too seriously.
Mainly just tweaked the colours, needed much more contrast, warmer and redder.
I though that bulging neck muscles would be a better fit for the beefcake.

Stuff I didn't touch in the edit:
Humans all have pretty much the same size head, regardless of age/body type, so unless the leftmost guy is a hobbit he needs a bigger head.

[Pixelicious]

Bulgin neck!  

Yeah warmer tones I agree, but isn't that too much in your picture?

I didn't know that human heads are the same size I think a tleast the first guy's forehead is too small

I will return with an edit, thx!

EDIT:
Here's a quick edit with tones changed, I added some bulge in da neck and made the first guys head taller.



offtopic: Do you guys know how to disable the zoom smoothing in Google Chrome?

[pistachio]

First, welcome to Pixelation!

Second off, there are some problems I'd like to point out:

Flat shading. Just adding a rim of light along the outlines you've drawn isn't how lighting works. This leads to inconsistency in the direction of the light-source. Recognize the forms your drawing is made out of, and try shading around that. The sprite is in need of stronger shadows as well, or overall more contrast.

Which is what I've done in this edit:



Eyes don't glow in the dark. There are instances when their whites are visible of course, but they're not usually this white. Got rid of the stark white color, and used that for another color. I didn't do much for the guy on the right though.

Minor anatomy/proportion tweaking of the neck and shoulder muscles as well. There's some lineart for clearer reference on the guy to the left.

[Pixelicious]

Understood! If the light source is directly to the right, then it is correct, am I rite? 

How do you go on about choosing the darker and lighter tones? I'm using photoshop and usually just color pick a tone close to the original color..

[Kain Nobel]

There are tons of sources where you can read about color theory, this is just one of them.

One of the simplest rules of thumb is not to just use a darker or lighter shade of the same color, it makes things look flat. Instead, try hue shifting your colors, warm colors for highlights and cold colors for shading. An example would be tree foilage; green is obviously your base color, but you would accent it with a greenish-yellow tint for highlights and a greenish-blue tint for shading.

The example I gave above deals with colors which are complimentary to each other, as yellow and blue are two primary shades that are mixed to make green (at least in the painting world.) I believe Photoshop has a color wheel, which you can select colors with options such as Hue, so try visiting your color wheel with Hue selected.

I hope this advice was of some help, good luck!