GR#101 - Humanoid - Color / Anatomy / Perspective

[IvanX]

In an attempt to get back into spriting for the umpteenth I started a little doodle that ended up being a terrible attempt at understanding colors.
Honestly I have no idea what I'm doing here, so any critique would be appreciated
*Edit*
Re-upped because imageshack hates me.

[Helm]

Hi, IvanX. First of all congrats on what you've got so far, it's quite beautiful. Extra thanks for drawing a realistically proportioned person. Are you working from reference? If so it'd be best to link to that as well because some critique on likeness should be based on the reference (I am not sure about the muscles in the back and how you've abstracted them, but they might look like that in the reference too, for example). I'm pretty sure the leg tapers off too thin, too soon, though. But again, it depends. Don't cut off your figures without legs, ever. Even if in the end you cut the legs off for composition, at a learning stage you should do the full figure.

I do not see much trouble with your colors, so far. If you do not add in-betweens, you'll just have to make the clusters all good and it can stand like that. I do think you're missing some high values here and there, look at this face edit



Note that besides slightly adjusting your palette, there is only one extra palette entry (the brightest color). See how much of a difference it makes?

Also this is a good point to note how much power a single pixel change can have. Look at the two expressions and see if they feel different. Only one pixel has been changed



I'd work through the body more in my edit but I don't want to steer you wrong, depends on your reference.

[Tourist]

I think the arm is too large.  The elbow is way down by the hips, and the large shoulder means you have no room for both shoulder blade and rib cage.

The ear seems a little high on the skull.  I think the spine doesn't quite line up with the neck vertebrae, but this may be because the ear is throwing the whole area off, or the shadows on the neck are off, or something.  Helm's edit clearly defines the angle of the head, but it doesn't fix the head-neck-spine angles, in my opinion.

I'm not sure I agree with the lighting on the legs.  There is light all the way down the arm, and in the small of the back, but nothing down the leg.  This appears to be lit with a point light source aimed at the shoulder, like a camera phone flash?  I'm not sure this is the lighting setup you want to emulate. 

Hope this helps,
Tourist

[Facet]

What was the pallette experiment? The values and hue shift are pretty solid and appealing respectively , but it's hard to help on this front without some explanation.

I can however, point out some anatomy stuff. When I'm drawing women I find that skeletal features make for better landmarks to help orientate and shade the figure than muscles do (even in larger women); on the back these would be the little triangle made by the iliac crest at the base of the spine, the hips, edge of the ribcage and the scapulars; not just the spine. I actually think the head is pretty big (really depends on the proportions of the girl though), and I second the points raised about the shoulder and taper of the thigh.

I've edited for the above as well as the light-source consistency that Tourist mentioned; It looks like you wanted to spotlight the butt but the remainder looks like near top left .

[Grimsane]

did an edit lastnight, but got too tired and didn't post it, and now there are some decent ones done already, and just facet has ninja'd me and made my edit less significantly helpful  
I did this edit, just to correct to some degree what I thought was a bit off about the head, encourage to define curvaceous forms ie the butt more, to avoid it reading as lumpy, and to reinforce volume. all without drastically changing your piece much.


and then I figured I'd try and show how far you could push it with relatively minor adjustments, and keep it anatomically plausible, and keeping with the stylized approach, although Facet's edit is a great example of realism

and as Helm touched on there is great impact from minor changes to the clusters, it's a difficult line between curve and unappealing lumpy shapes in pixel art, You've done a relatively good job, and you're piece has quite an appealing style.
also it would be good to specify how far you want to stylize your reference or how closely you are trying to adhere to it. Reference can be great, but if you commit too rigidly (atleast when you are trying to convey your own artistic touch/style) then it can lose a substantial amount of interest. art rarely ever depicts reality, it almost always augments it. so emphasizing curves, exaggerating features and the extent to which you do that will define the style, pushing what you yourself find most appealing even when just doing studies can help evolve your own style. I also figured I'd emphasis another thing which would be sourcing multiple references, and if something isn't working you could fix it, or back it up, erase the element that's troubling you and experiment with something else entirely. hopefully I haven't introduced more issues, and hope it's helpful beyond what's already been in other's edits and I didn't just spend an hour or so for no reason


and as before stated there is nothing at all inherently wrong with your palette it's quite good. and as before touched on by Facet, the relational changes in value and hue are all appealing

Edit:  realizing how long of that I spent on rendering that head, I might salvage the time back and use it for something of my own

[IvanX]

Wow, three separate edit, I'm a little touched guys.
That aside, i feel like I'm making some progress here.

There was a reference pic I had around the start of this but tossed it after I had the pose down, I honestly have no idea where to find it again. 
Also tweaked the colors a bit for some more contrast and vibrant colors. On that note, the purpose of this color experiment was more or less too see if I still had a passable understanding of working with colors.
I'm not quite sure where I want to go with this, maybe expand it and create and entire composition, or drop it and work on something else.
Bleh, decisions.

[Grimsane]

definitely an improvement but I am a little hesitant about that head, I think it's a combination of slightly misshapen and shading, the volume of the body and the anatomy is significantly better but again It feels, to me atleast that the head is somewhat detached, could probably fix it with shading, or you could just find another piece of 'insignificant' reference that you can ditch ones you get the general look or relative shading down

after staring at it awhile longer, I think the eyes are quite a bit high. I'd guesstimate around 1-3 pixels too height

[Ryumaru]

I think the best thing to do with this piece is to simplify forms. You're doing a good job of describing form, but you're describing a lot of minor ones, some unnecessarily so. I'm rusty with the mouse so I probably didn't get the forms as well as they should be but you can see that some are amplified and some are diminished entirely.

The head is a bit too large.

I also enforced the contraposto of the pose; if you're depicting something so beautiful as the female form, why not go the extra mile?

good luck on the image :]

[Helm]

Much improvement.

Not a good idea to throw away reference. Now you'll have to find new ones.



As you see if you draw the rest of your figure, it is leaning right now. That's not necessarily bad, but you have to keep track of this sort of thing. This is why I suggest you should not cut off feet when doing such studies.

The numbered bits are where you should hunt down photographic reference to continue.

1. A turned head/neck from the back, so you see how this particularily difficult part of anatomy behaves under this stress
2. a rested shoulder/upper arm from that vantage, including the back muscles, this is the most important part of your piece that needs more work right now, the biggest focal point after the face.
3. Leaning leg muscles and especially the back of the knee
4. Lower back at lean stress, that 'heart' shape especially.