anatomy practice

[Demon11777]

I wanted to try and make a simple human male and shade it smoothly with correct muscle structure, I think it came out ok. Anything that should have been done better? C+C Please and thanks 

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[Kaito]

im not a pixel artist yet but the legs looks too short..

[NaCl]

Nice work on the torso and arms, the shapes there are quite good. I suggest redrawing the legs from scratch though, they look withered and mutated. Look at more reference material for that, perhaps even yourself in the mirror.

Also, you are pillow shading really badly. I hardly know where to start with advice on fixing this, but you need to think of the shape of the entire object, not just shade one ab, then another ab, then a bicep, then a pec. They are all part of one overall shape and light is not going to behave by highlighting the middle of every muscle and shading the outside rim. The light catches edges facing towards it, and is less present on surfaces facing away or surfaces shielded by other surfaces. I see a bit of understanding of this on certain parts, but you need to apply it thoroughly and completely for any effect.

Look into head anatomy as well, for proportions and shape. The eyes go half way between the top of the skull and the bottom of the chin for instance.

[Demon11777]

Thanks for your reply/ advice. Im going to try and shade more accordingly to a light source in the upper left, and of course see what i can do about the legs.   

Thanks guys   

[EyeCraft]

My recommendation is to study and practise using a medium other than pixel art. Pencil and paper is likely the best choice.

Pixel art presents its own family of challenges and technique. You don't want to be wrestling with these in addition to wrestling with a body of knowledge as daunting as anatomy.

You need to find some literature on the subject. A good anatomy book written for artists that breaks the body down into general proportions, shapes and planes. We could sit here and write long lists of proportions and point out corrections. If someone wants to take up that cup, power to them, but I think most of us don't have the time.

In respect to the pixel art aspects; you have a lot of very jagged lines (basically the outlines of everything but the head). Your palette is extremely low contrast. This greatly inhibits your ability to define the form of the subject with light and shadow. I recommend dropping your darkest tone all the way to near-black and your lightest all the way to near-white. Then you will very clearly see errors in shading. As for the shading, a lot of it is pillow shading. NaCl remarked on this already. When shading the figure, it is most helpful to break the figure down into much simpler 3d primitives. Boxes, cylinders, spheres. You need to be able to understand the body as an extention of this basic 3d framework if you want to be able to shade it convincingly. This comes back to the need for a book.

In short: to the books and the pencils with you!

[Demon11777]

  Thank you very much for your advice. Very helpful answer!!   Makes alot of sense. so thank you again