Birthday card; an angel adaptation Shading getting there, wings to do next

[Ultimaodin]

Hey evreyone long time no see. Just got a new computer so I can pixel again. Unfortunately having not pixelled for months and already having been a noob I'm having a difficulty on my project.
So anyway first off I'd like to mention I do have a time limit for this piece, being my friend's birthday party on Saturday night. I know with such a time limit I shouldn't have picked such a large canvas but this is the stock size I generally work with for birthday cards.

So yeah straight to the point I am having troubles with the female form. Mainly the boobs part to be honest, I just can't work out the angel and shape properly. Anyway the concept behind this piece is I'm turning my friend into an angel (she loves angels) and I'm going to give here a sort of blueish silver flowing dress because blue is one of her favourite colours. (or at least used to be.) She is going to be leaning forward as if flying and a set of doves are going to be carrying a cake on a cloth in-front of her with a large 21 candle. Yeah a little cliche but yeah. I feel I've captured her face I just seem to be having a lot of problems doing the upper body. So anyway the art thus-far:



reference picture:


Just lying down basic shapes/line-art right now.

All C+C and help will be gladly appreciated. ^_^
ps I wouldn't be posting this in it's current state typically but yeah I have a very close deadline for somebody as unskilled as myself.

[pistachio]

"Captured her face"? I wouldn't say exactly. I don't mean to be offensive. It's just that the lips seem to be the most "off" part, along with many other parts of her face, mainly perspective and proportion-wise. Could be the reference you're using--if you have one closer to the pose you're using, you may be better off using that. If not I uh.. Don't exactly know how to help you. But if so far, the face looks this off and you're considering it sufficient it will probably be more or less the same with the body.

Perhaps do some rough sketching to get the general idea of the position of the head, features, torso and etcetera before moving onto the clean lineart as a lack of planning also seems to be the case here.

[Ultimaodin]

I tried sketching I just so overly suck at female proportions, yeah honestly never drawn a female until now. I generally do monsters and stuff as I've always failed at human anatomy.
That is really the only ref I have except what I can remember in my head. This is essentially my rough part, I haven't gone for perfect lines yet.
How do you feel the face is off? Just so I have a better idea of what you mean, etc... chin...

[Tourist]

I think sketching some reference lines for yourself would help.  Generally the mouth line is parallel to the eye line.  In your image it is unclear how much the head is tilted to the side, that is, towards/away from the viewer.  The eyes tilt, but the mouth is horizontal.

Compare these two images.  Eh, not a great reference, but it was the first I found.



The first is a fairly level 3/4 view.  The eyes are level.  The mouth, corner to corner, is roughly parallel, although the expression makes this hard to see.  The second image is the same model, 3/4 view, with a tilted head.  Mouth remains parallel to the eye line.  Neither has the head tilted back (chin thrust out) like your image, and the face is structured differently (this model has a weird compressed face), but hopefully it helps with the angle of the mouth. 

Also, consider moving the entire mouth down a pixel and making the upper lip a straight line (at whatever angle is correct).  A big smile tends to straighten the upper lip, unless the view is from under the chin.

Issue 2, the hair.  Your friend has thick curly hair.  It occupies volume, and rises above her skull.  In your image the hair is painted on the skull, and looks almost straight.  I don't have any specific fixes because I'm terrible at hair, but I see the problem.

Good luck,
Tourist

[Ultimaodin]

Hey tourist just would like to say I understand the mouth being off a lot more now, the second pis is essentially the angle I'm going for, I'm just trying to work out the nose so it fits the alignment.
Also for the hair I was going to use shadow (I haven't added all the colours yet) to show it being away from the scalp or did you mean I need to make the initial hair rise at the top much steeper?
That also helps me with the neck more as well, where did you find these images? I searched the web for ages trying to find the right pose, even went to pose maniacs.

Also I did straight hair instead of curly because well pixelling curly hair confuses me. How? How do you show a group of curly hair other than doing squiggles and squiggles always look sucky. I just can't comprehend the lighting on curly hair even though curly hair always looks much more beautiful than straight. She does straighten her hair from time to time though which why I decided to just go for straight with a tad of curl within the straightness.
Also since I have the head aligned to that angle should I make the shoulders and such to a similar one because as of now I have the head looking sort of turned in, could this confuse the eye do you think? I don't think it should matter when shaded.

Anyway will post an image later as I have to go hand in my uni application. Will just edit into this post.

EDIT:


Wow why am I so horrid at anatomy. -_-

[Mush]

Wow why am I so horrid at anatomy. -_-

Because anatomy takes years of daily practice to master.

[Ultimaodin]

Yeah true, that's probably why I fail at it. I'm thinking after this I will whip out the old art book that was lost in storage until I moved and practice some anatomy pixelling.

Anyway an update, please as before all C+C is welcome. Anyway I best get back to it as I am on a time limit.



ps do you think the (our) right arm is a good length? Looks about right to me for the upper part but I may be wrong.


EDIT:

I need to fix the forearm so it thins down to add the wrist and hand (not looking forward to doing the hands) and I think the shading of the (our) right boob is off. It needs to be less light me thinks.

Making progress but slowly. I need to pick up the pace!

[Ultimaodin]

Double posting like a BOSS!!!! 



So yeah getting there, unfortunately slowly. I'm not making the dress any longer as I've decided to move Christine down to give me more space to work on the wings. I still need to shade the far hand and my mate just brought to my attention the fact that the dress wouldn't work how it is now and the upper trim (ok I actually don't know what to call the top of the dress) needs to either have a strap/s or go further underneath the armpit.Trying to decide which I think would look better, probably under, plus under gives the interpretation that her upper back is uncovered making wings protruding more plausible.
Decided against the whole doves and cake idea since I don't think I will have the time, instead (since I'm moving her down) I'm going to add a sun to the top-left corner as the light-source hidden behind a cross of some kind. (She's heavily christian if your curious as to why) The Happy 21st Birthday will just be text at the bottom left.
Also I actually couldn't think of how to pixel fabric so I ah, well kind of drew random squiggles. Thankfully the dress isn't a focal point.

Anyway yet again C&C welcome.

Ps I had to use banding in a few places for the fingers as for the life of me I couldn't work out how to shade them without doing just that. sorry.