A four armed man crosses paths with a curious wolf.

[AlexHW]

The desaturation is mostly an exploration I'm choosing to focus on.
I like looking at the natural world and in my eyes it usually seems desaturated.
Because I like to draw what I see and not draw what I THINK I see, it is a habit of mine to reproduce the desaturatedness of the world in my mind.
With game art and sprites and such, you have to compensate in areas so that the product works effectively, hence the usual need to up the contrast and have things pop.
With this image, it just came naturally desaturated, i didnt really think about it, it's just how my mind works based on how I would expect the things to look in reality.

[Helm]

If you're trying to mimic reality, I can tell you that things are a lot more saturated than that in most lighting conditions. Unless you live in a moor somewhere surrounded by deep mist.

[AlexHW]

One has a hard time mimicking reality with that which is not real.
If I want to mimick reality to the extreme, I'd be doing a still-life type of thing.
How I interpret something imaginary is somewhat filtered through what I expect things to be.
The desaturatedness of the world just seems more memorable I guess. I don't doubt that reality has alot of saturation.
Perhaps I could explore the saturated aspects of reality sometime.
If you want to discover something, you have to explore it.

[ndchristie]

i think people are mistaking what im saying about the low-value-contrast thing.  The saturation values in the piece i posted are not very different from yours, they raise a little bit but not much.  what changes is value contrast.  i think the desaturatedness is fine, i dont care about it, but your values make this barely readable to my eyes.  That and the natural world is really quite saturated, and i think showing all the color of the natural world is talent, not compensation (game-art excluded because it seldom even tries to be realistic)

helm, i can see where you are coming from, though i still think if a board worked to discuss such topics more regularly, we would all learn from it.....perhaps not

if it helps, go outside and see just how dark your shadow is, or how green the grass is, or yellow the flowers.  if its a rainy day, marvel at the blueness of everything and how brilliantly the orange streetlights shine because the complementary colors embolden the difference.  take a piece of white china and try not to find a myriad of hues (youll have trouble).  I think the desaturatedness of your work is nice, but if you really think that the world is that subtle, youve spent too much time under flourescent lights

one thing ive been wanting to say for a while, i think the crotch of th elbow looks off, the bicep exte4nds much too far imo.  there should be a period where the muscle falls away and theres just a few tendon srtings to give form

[Kennethfejer]

yeah i bit too washed out for my taste as well, but really cool never the less.

[Turbo]

If realism is your point, you should follow adarias' example and point to high(er) contrast, lower saturation rather than the high saturation, low contrast you've done. I've told you this before, and apparently (most) everyone in this thread agrees. Ron Lemen says that as long as you have the values of a piece "correct" (let's say, realistic), the saturation and hues are of smaller importance. Well, what happens here is that you don't have the values correct to start with.

As an exercise on an abstract foggy reality, it's okay though. Not as reality. Practice on photographs or real-life examples, you'll see what we mean.

[Rox]

I don't agree with all this "Higher constrast plz!" talk. And after staring at the piece for a while, I figured out why.

It looks a lot like a painting this way. You don't think "pixels" the first thing when you look at it. You think "art".

And I happen to like art.

[AlexHW]

how's this:
clothes!

edit:

It looks a lot like a painting this way. You don't think "pixels" the first thing when you look at it. You think "art".

ah, good. I'm glad it gives that effect since I was trying for a more artsy feel.

[Xion]

Rox just put into words what I could not.
Edit: What is that new guy supposed to be doing? Falling?

[Helm]

mistworld continues! I leave you with a haiku:

black pixels hurt me

the forms need to be tightened

and the outlines cleaned