RPG girl

[ndchristie]

this is a bit old, but i dont think ive ever asked for a real critique on this, and since the project is being dusted off, i think i should (ive got to do a bunch more in all the same style, so i should make sure people like the style before i go ahead and make 10)

intended to be a sprite for a menu background (and cropped version for dialogue boxes), its probably the largest work of mine



i think this was very much my first real attempt at extensive color mixing,a nd i probably used a few too many colors in the process while still managing to skimp on some areas. i may well edit this at some point but for now im considering it finished (i havent opened the file in months )

19 colors

[Helm]

this is the legs-too-long-anime style, yes? Well if you do it on purpose I can just say it's there. Check your abs area, I think you're impovising it a bit too much.

I wouldn't use blues on the hair, nor skin color on bra (skin color on cloth, unless masterfully handled just looks like holes in the fabric)

hand in hair really doesn't work, she has no palm, only fingers. Rework that bit?

A bit crosseyed, I'd say give her a full nose, smaller lips, upper lip. Edit pending.

[ndchristie]

oo goody, a usefull critique, thats what i like to see

when i update this ill take all of that into account

as i said, this was done a while back (actually in september of '05) and ive got 8 months worth of experience since then that i plan to put to good use once i hear what everyone wants fixed

as a post script, are you sure i can use blue on the hair and cream on the bikini top? i kinda like it in the hair, and without the cream the bathin suit looks like it isnt part of the torso color region (which it is).  if they must go, could you suggest an alternative? (id use lavender in both places but faktalbad is right in saying i use too much of it)

[ptoing]

I think the upperleg to shin ratio needs to shift a bit. the upperleg should be slightly longer than the shin afaik.
Alos HER left breast should be a bit higher and slightly stretched up because of the raised arm.

Good work tho. listen to Helm

[ndchristie]

thanks

if it helps, here is the original sketch (a quickie) i did that this work is made from. it might give better insight in to what i hoped to achieve back in the fall

[Helm]

I can tell you one thing: your current palette is hell. The jacket works so well it is just almost worth it, but in the end a lot of restructuring is in order if you want to do all you can do with it. Looking at your (old, but still) stuff closer, I have these crits that I believe are valid and you should give them thought:

*pixel art is a precise art form. Every pixel needs to be placed with intention. Right now, you're too messy. You look at your stuff too much on 1x zoom (am I right?) and it works there but what bars good pixel art from being great pixel art sometimes is the extra sheen of smooth people (like ptoing, not me so much) put that you don't see in 1x (but which you see in 2x) that almost subconsciously make you feel 'this is smooth, this is deliberate'. More precise pixel placement. AA everything you need to aa. If you have lines that have 3-4 levels of lightness difference on surfaces, and you've not yet AAed them with buffers, you should ask yourself why you're not doing this. Pixel art can be a naturalistic medium where everything is equally detailed and BLAM in your face intense, or it can be a medium where attention is diverted to places with more information against more blank stuff. In either case, where you DO have pixel information packed tightly, your skills need to be uber-extra tight. Every pixel in it's right place. This is the quest, and it will take you as many years as you put into it.

*different planes of lightness. Under the neck it's darker than on the brow, and therefore you START with a darker base regardless of what tints on information you later on pack in there. This is important in ever level. Items have volumes and are faceted. Study the face as a collection of geometric shapes, and give different planes initial values that aren't all flat. If you're coming from a comic art or manga art of anime art background: forget. Look at objects as collections of primitives like painters do, and don't rely on hisaturation unless you're making a point with it. If you have too much white (or too much black. Guilty Helm? Guilty) and it's not a stylistic thing, you need to think about why you're doing it. Like when someone takes a hicontrast photo of something, or posterizes, things are easier to draw like that, but you strip away a lot of the challenge. Tone your lightness values down, and do it the challenging way: show brightness through juxtaposition and contrast where you need it. White is the 'I put a specular highlight here, tee hee' color, not a big surface color. (some of the time. I think you should try)

*forget selout. Break outlines in relation to how 'thick' the contour you're trying to express is, forget gameart, even WHEN you're doing gameart. Everything benefits from this. Selout was a flawed conception to begin with and only works for stuff that is highly specialized for it, and your stuff just gets added dirt because of it. Lightness should apply to outlines, even when they're differentiating signifiers (meaning: when the are ment to say 'HERE the arm ends, and the jacket begins') and the trick is to make them dark ENOUGH, not a collection of dots impressing a broken dirty outline.

the sounds all 'I ARES KNOWE THE TRUETH' but I don't mean it as such, I am just in a hurry. This is all IMO and you can take it or leave it. Just trying to help.

[ndchristie]

helm i like your style, an i appreciate the critique (its quite nice and detailed), but i do wish to say (and i mean this in the nicest of ways), i dont want to draw like you (which explains why our works look nothing like each other ).  this piece is done in a particular style, and as much as i like yours, yours isnt it.  if you have any suggestions as to how i can improve on the existing work to be more presentable i would love to have them, but what you have suggested feels like redoing the same picture in a different way than adjusting an old picture to be better.  perhaps i should not have asked for too much advise, since i have a pretty narrow vision of where i want to take this particular piece.

also, does it make more sense to know that this is intended to be viewed only at 1x?  i do a lot of work, this included, that isnt supposed to be zoomed in upon, which i know will draw a lot of criticism, but the fact is that if something isnt intended to be zoomed in, i dont care what it looks like zoomed in.  this may be the wrong place for works like this which arent really pixelart in that sense.

EDIT: i gotta admit, i felt like an ass saying that

[Helm]

Just my opinion, it's bound to be relative to what I think is interesting to see. You don't have to explain yourself or explain why you won't take my critique. But it is indeed not exactly 100% nice to ask for critique and then say you didn't want it in the first place.

About style and editing a style: you're correct, I did change the style because I found it impossible to make the image interesting to my eyes while retaining the sparse anime style you were going for on the face. Just take it like a different approach. There's still technique there to look at regardless of the shape of the nose or mouth.

About the 1x zoom, if you say so. I personally like art that can be zoomed in and pixel art is the prime medium for that kind of detail. Ask yourself if you're playing up the medium's strengths if your work is nozoom. I'd go with free CG instead.

[Turbo]

It has a few "posture" problems: if the left leg is almost totally behind the right one, the "pants zipper line" (sorry about the vocabulary, my english is failing me now ) should be mid-way between what you have now and the left contour line, because that leg makes the hips twist to the left. The right breast seems a bit too twisted to the right, it should be pushed more to the center, closer to the other one (or the inverse, push the right breast more to the left, to make the distance to the torso center line equal between both breasts).

The perspective lines that run through the feet, knees, hips, belly, breasts and shoulders should be something closer to parallel (or moving to a vanishing point at the left), but i think they're a bit all over the place (the head is what looks most out of perspective, and the other parts marginally as well, but enough to be a bit of a bother).

Otherwise, it's very pretty. The things that bother me more are the figure construction aspects that i mentioned, i suggest you keep attention at these while you're sketching the initial drafts.

[ndchristie]

thansk, ill try to take these about the forms etc things into account if i edit

and helm, i dont mean that i dont want critique, if i didnt want critique i wouldnt have posted it.  but, though i dont want to sound like an ass, what you offered was not a critique, it was an explanation of a somewhat similar but really entirely different piece of art, and though perfectly nice and valid, that isnt what im looking for.  i like your edit (even though shes supposed to be northern european and you made her into a hispanic ), but the fact remains that youve more or less suggested scrapping everything but the  and general lines and costume colors, which isnt a critique at all (im not sure what to call it).

as far as asking myself if 1x zoom pieces really take full advantage of the medium, i dont even have to think to say that no, they dont take full advantage of the medium's pixel-perfect detail, they dont even try to and arent going to, thats not what they are ment to be, so like i said perhaps posting this on a site that focusses highly  on that particular aspect of pixel art was a mistake.

thanks again everyone for the advise on the proportions, forms, etc, ill keep them in mind later.  However, since this is clearly not the place for this, i wont be posting it here.  a moderator may lock or destroy this topic that their disgression.

[Helm]

Actually no, fair is fair and all things considered. My three asterisk points were general critique about your art, they weren't explaining my edit on the level where the style shift has anything to do. I can take the nose and lips off my edit and my critique still stands. Neater pixel art work, more focus on the volumetric aspect and a disuse of selout for other means of accenting linework. I don't want to press a non-issue, but what I did *was* critique to the best of my ability. If it's not helpful to you, I'm sorry. But don't discount it's significance as critique because it might boil down to 'start over' for this piece.

And you say eastern european and this begs the question... does she look eastern european in your original sketch and pixel piece? Or does she look like an anime girl?

This doesn't have to be locked at all. I'm sure since I couldn't be helpful somebody else will do a better job at critiquing your faults in this endeavour than me.

[Ryumaru]

adarias, if this was meant only to be observed at 1x zoom, then a think that you are basically making computer art with pixels this way for the lack of a program such as psp or photoshop. this may not be youre intentions, but pixelart imo is supposed to be pixel tight. with intention behind every pixel placed. if you want art that is only to be made at 1x zoom, there are different options for this then pixel art.

of course im not saying that this isnt pixelart, or whatever. or that you should quit and use a vector program of some sort.
this post probably wasnt very helpful, but meh.

[ndchristie]

your points are well met but again, in retrospect, you are right in the things you said, and the fact is that this is not the place for this, because this is a pixel art community and what i've posted is an anime drawing. as far as the anime itself is conerned, its not the direction i would have it taken, but its the direction that it needs to go because that is the direction that the project has been directed and that is out of my hands.  You are right in your question, and the fact is that high cheek bones, narrow eyes, thin lips, and nearly snow-white skin are the only things about this particular illustration that make her northern european, and those arent much, but though it doesnt look like a real-life northern euorpean, it is clearly distinguishible from your edit, which by that same standard i suppose doesnt look like a real-life hispanic. 

it is my personal opinion that the fact that a critique boils down to throw it out destroys the purpose of the critique, which in my mind is to provide constructive feedback in a way that pertains to the actual piece.  to be frank, if you get through what you are saying and your only suggestion to improve the piece is to throw it out and start over, then you should not have made the suggestion under the pretense of assisting with the piece, you should simply have said to throw it out.  call a spade a spade, not a critique.

that being said, i do have a great deal of respect for you, and i do not wish this disagreement to create a permanent rift, so i would say, if not because this picture is not pixel-art, then in the interest of condeming this disagreement as unproductive this should be locked.  theres no reason for two people to continue feeling indignant over a drawing that doesnt warrant further discussion  in any event, i wont be posting in this thread anymore.

@ryumaru, no, you are right, it isnt pixelart.  i have photoshop and i could use it if i wanted, but i didnt.  but you are right in that this isnt pixel art, which is why this ought to be destroyed

[AdamAtomic]

you guys are awfully dramatic   i think its a solid piece that could easily have been in any number of PC games throughout my childhood.  i'm a bit of a noob still, but i do believe that selout has a place in most pixel art, however this piece doesn't really use selout as much as just plain outlining; softening the edge of the bathing suit/bra thing, especially the upper/inside edge, would help a lot i think.  she is awfully skinny too   style is as style does, but she just doesn't look healthy!

the color mixing on the jacket is really beautiful, and something i am just beginning to contemplate in my own pixelart - i appreciate you posting this picture even though "it should be destroyed" - just because you have learned all there is to learn from it doesn't mean we all have!

[Xion]

Did I miss something? Why isn't this pixel art? This is F'in beautiful, just like all the other stuff you do, Adarias...especially the update. The only thing that's buggin' my eye is the hand going through her hair...it looks backwards...and small.

[neverest]

Adarias you rock and this is lovely. I feel the stomach is overworked for the style, and I'm not keen on the shoes but its still beautiful, I especially like the blue in the hair. have you thought about maybe making her look < a bit? or maybe have the head pointing that way but the eyes looking at us, I just think that would feel a bit more natural.
The idea that adarias should be moved along to CG work just because he doesnt work to higher zoom levels is rediculous, not to mention fucking anal. I rate adarias a much better artist than most veterans here because he has a little thing called passion. I find it very dis-heartening that the soul-less robots here are so completely obsessed with  precision and technicality over aeshetic value and emotion.
I always found the term pixel art to be something of a contradiction in itself, I have to very much struggle to see it as 'art' which to me, as I've stated should have some fucking soul to it. It seems much more a craft, and browsing through peoples opinions of good "Non-Pixel Art" I must say I was very disapointed to see very few people here can see that. I really don't feel I fit in here, and although I've learnt a lot while here I can't see I'll be coming back as I really can't stand some of your attitudes.

There are of course some lovely users.
Sorry to rant in your thread Adarias.

[Faceless]

Tried my hand at an edit... I only messed around with the face, but I hope it's helpful.
I agree with Helm that your palette is a pain to work with, and I pretty much second the majority of his crits.