[WIP] self-portrait

[Franrek]

I wanted to create portrait of myself in pixel art and I made this:

Looking foward to critique, tips and any other feedback.

[dotodrymo]

My knee-jerk reaction would be to go for a more interesting pose. As it is, you have several unnecessary colors that don't read well at 1:1, and your palette is washed out, which makes this piece look gloomy.

Palette edit:

[Franrek]

Palette edit

Thx great edit. I always have problem with creating good palletes. This one tho is just a little bit too colour full for me. I want it to be kinda realistic so i changed the colours a bit, made jeans diffrent from shirt. Added some small fixes and changed boots too, coz they were looking to bally and were merging with jeans too much for me.

[dotodrymo]

Nice! That looks a lot better, especially the shoes.

I understand omitting small details on a sprite this size, but I think you could imply a face, if you felt like it.

I also think that you could definitely cut the four (?) grayish colors down to two. But admittedly, I'm obsessed with palette reduction. 

[Runensucher]

You have to work on the shading. There is no actual lightsource and thereby a lot of pillow shading is represented.
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322

[Franrek]

You have to work on the shading. There is no actual lightsource and thereby a lot of pillow shading is represented.
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139322#139322

Thx for sharing usefull guide. What version are you talking about? Edited on or orginal?

Added lighting from left side. On the right one just small changes without using diffrent colours or dithering. I tried adding dithering on the left one for more visible shades but I think it's too messy. Thoughs?