First Attempt at shading. Feedback would be appreciated

[jefequeso]

Visually un-skilled pixel beginner here, trying to wrap my head around shading.  Here's my super generic mage guy.



I've been fooling around for about an hour, and I can't get him to look right.  The idea is that the lightsource is the fireball.  I've been working with limited colors at 16x16 because I want to get a handle on the basics and get used to making every pixel count, before I start messing with anything more complicated.

Some help/feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Rosier]

Seeing him might help...
Even if there's a click to enlarge, it would help to make it appear a bit bigger and remove the black background.
I would look at at the old Final Fantasy games, cause they had some minor shading done on them.  Otherwise I might spring for 32x32 or something, cause when half your pixels are shading, the details are pretty lost.


In terms of what you have, you seem to go halfway with the effects of the fire ball.  It illuminates the arm and hood that are facing it, but the torso and robe kind appear to be lit only in the center when there's not a lot blocking them.

[yaomon17]

It is a good start for sure. I think you are limiting your colors a bit too much. It is very difficult to use fire as a light source with only 2 colors since a lot of the highlights would lean toward more yellow/red hues. If your base object that is being lighted is not already red/yellow, then the transition is going to be very harsh with only 2 colors.



My advice would be to not limit yourself as much, but make sure every color is being put to good use.
Also up the contrast and make the fire a bit more saturated. It will make the fire look more intense.
Spoiler

good luck

[jefequeso]

Here's an updated attempt, heavily modified.  I used a few more colors this time, and I think it turned out better, but there are still some areas where I wasn't quite sure what to do.  Thoughts?

[JoeCreates]

I'm not sure it's going to be too useful to figure out shading with something this small. You're better off with something at least 40x40, I'd say. There will be more opportunity to go wrong, but also more opportunity to learn.

[Decroded]

I'm not sure it's going to be too useful to figure out shading with something this small. You're better off with something at least 40x40, I'd say. There will be more opportunity to go wrong, but also more opportunity to learn.

+1 make ur life easier with a larger canvas
this should help avoid getting stuck in the endless loop of pushing so few pixels around.