[WIP] Swamp Thing Portrait

[tritone]

Hello there, this will be my first post. I'm pretty much completely new to drawing/painting and I seem to have stumbled upon a somewhat decent piece that is well beyond everything I've done thus far.



I'd really appreciate your feedback and criticisms! Don't hold back, thanks!

edit: Fixed scaling

[ptoing]

Welcome to Pixelation

I like your little character because he reminds me of the stuff I used to draw (and sometimes still do).
The underlying structure and lighting seems solid enough, but the dithering is way too much and in general I think it could need more pixel precision.

So I made this, very extensive and perhaps a bit over the top, edit


- The first thing I did was clean up
- Then I removed the dither from the background as well and made the frame darker, I think it helps to make the character pop more
- Then I antialiased, cleaned up and tweaked the colours quite a bit. The final result is one colour less than your version.
- I also added the graphical stuff at the top right because I thought it fit his perplex expression

Btw, there is no need to post doublesized stuff on this page, we have a zoom script, you just need to click stuff to make it go bigger.

If you have any specific questions just ask. Hope this helps

[tritone]

That's just amazing, I love it! What program did you use? Do you use a tablet?

I've started reworking our friend here, long way to go but I've begun to address some of the points you've raised:



Thanks a ton! I'll try to see this through

edit: progress

[ptoing]

Nice, you are coming along

I would advise you to for now get rid of all antialias and dither. Just try to get the "clusters" nice looking and solid by themselves.

If you are confused by the word clusters, read the following thread. It is very long and wordy but it should answer (and possibly raise a few) questions.

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=8110.0

I like what you are doing with the wrinkles
Keep at it.

Oh also: I use Cosmigo Promotion for my pixelart, and yes I do use a tablet. It's not that either of those things makes you better, just faster with time

[tritone]

Thanks very much ptoing, the feedback and direction is incredibly illuminating

Okay, so a few educational hours later and I've hopefully got something that you were looking to see:



I did mainly follow your clusters as a reference, but the shape of the guy is slightly different in this one so I did have to do some thinking for myself. Curious, is that how your edit looked at a point? The one major thing I took away the exercise, would be that your edit is no longer a terrifying wall of badass. I can sort of see the order now... might be able to reproduce it... that'd probably be necessary for my development...

Now, after reading through that thread a few times, I came up with this:



Man, is that it? Is that pretty much the process to paint/pixel something? You put the isolated clusters of value on a decent/clean sketch/silhouette and then slowly bring them together... and just sort of observe how they interact? This simplifies a lot of things...

Palette tweak of the old thing, because why not:



Edit: Kinda looks like Darth Vader. I think I'm beginning to understand how things are supposed to be drawn/painted

[ptoing]

Glad the feedback helps

I am not looking to see anything in particular. You should try to keep your artistic vision, I am just trying to show you alternatives and point you toward good general pixeltechnique, which should be learned before rules are attempted to be broken.

And indeed, my edit looked similar to that at some point. Don't bother too much about being able to recreate what I did, just look at what I did and try to understand it. How I did the antialias and such. Again, if you have specific questions, let me know.

There is not "THE process" to pixel or paint something, there are many approaches. Here the only thing I can say is do what works for you and what you are comfortable with, but try to become more efficient in general (something which never hurts, as you will get the same result faster). For example it is pretty pointless when making something small or even bigger to do really clean lineart for it if the lineart will not be visible in the end. Things like this, keep them in mind. Retrace your steps and try to see where you did something which could have been done faster in retrospect with the skill you are at atm.

The little head you made is OK, the clusters in the last version are alright, some banding here and there (where you aa diagonally too much mainly), but the anatomy is very wonky. If you want to learn to draw you should do studies from life or photos. Draw people and whatnot. Draw what you see.