A very sad robot.

[Kcilc]

Very sad avatar to clarify. Broken hearted even. He's sad because he still looks like crap. Got any ideas on how to help him? 

[Tourist]

I can't tell what I'm looking at.

The strong contrast between the gray and saturated red/orange overwhelms any of the other shading.  The gray vs red shapes particularly on the head(?) don't convey any form.

The rectangle at the top is the head?   The thought balloons should come from the top of the head instead of the lowest point.  Give it some sensors or features or something. 

I don't understand the feathers(?) on the head and back(?), nor the dark tutu at the bottom.

If you could describe the robot it might be easier to offer suggestions about representing the ideas.  It might be useful to include in the image a reference to what is making it heartbroken too.

Tourist

[7321551]

It's almost perfectly clear to me. Just the area between the neck & shoulder is ambiguous. I don't think there's a contrast problem - characters can contain multiple elements with distinct colors.
I would:

• fix-up neck/shoulder area
• remove the shading on the thought bubble - let that be purely symbolic.

[Kcilc]

I can't tell what I'm looking at.

It's almost perfectly clear to me.

  Antithetic!


@Tourist: beforehand, I decided that his girlfriend got sent to the junkyard; I was going to have him staring at a pile of broken robot parts, but I was too lazy, so I made a floating heart with a gaping hole instead. The top grey thing was made to compensate for his lack of eyebrows, and the bottom grey thing was supposed to represent a jaw. The red stuff was supposed to represent a cheek and nose. The feathers are an accent that I thought would be more creative than the oh so overused pipes, pistons, buttons, and vents; I was going for an almost tiki feel. I used to have the colors bleed into each other as you can see in my current avatar, but it made it look all confusing to me. I hope the robot looks clearer now!

@Jarrad: I noticed that his backpack was badly rendered too right after I posted him, and yeah, I always get carried with flat things. Heh.

Thanks for the comments!

EDIT FOR TOURIST: Alright sweet, I'm glad it works now.

[Tourist]

I like this one better.  The new jaw really helps define the head as a head.

Tourist