Pixel Portrait C&C needed

[trexrell]

Hey I was working on these series of ports for my project. I came up with what I believe to be a pretty good sprite. But my partner thinks I need some C&C which is always useful. I know its far from perfect but some advice would be good.

[Bissle]

A few things:

• The rendering of the facial features (the forehead, chin, side of the face) is pillow-shaded. Pillow-shading ends up making whatever you draw look plastic and unnatural. Every highlight doesn't need to perfectly outlined by a darker color. A more subtle way to do that would be anti-aliasing, but if you choose good enough colors, even that can be minimized unless you are really aiming for perfect smoothness.
• There were some small anatomy issues. His left eye was smaller than his right and the distance between his eyes is much greater than average (normally one eye width, but in this case, it was almost two).
• Because of the deal with the eyes, his nose ended up being crooked.
• The face was too perfectly round for me.
• While I didn't change them, the ears are too small--as a general rule, ears are from the brow line to the bottom of the nose.
• Something about the neck... it looks like it's too thick, but not really. Shading will make it look less so anyway; not a problem. I tried working on it myself, but by the time I got to the isolated pic, I just erased it.

I didn't render it as much as I could because I'm not sure what kind of character you wanted. Of course, those bits about anatomy are just general guidelines--if you want to draw someone with small ears and eyes that are far apart, if anything it could give the character more individuality. Just make sure to know the rules before you break them.

In any case, not a bad start. My edit has problems of its own, but I hope it helps, especially with proportions. It was fun messing around with it, and I hope to see an update if you decide to continue working on it.

[trexrell]

Cool I see what you mean. I will definitely work on it more. I see some of the things you did and will def give it another go.

[trexrell]

I took what you showed me and applied it to another image that I worked on today.

[trexrell]

Here is my second attempt on the 1st image.

[Grimsane]

while the style and proportions you are now achieving are indisputably better than your first attempt they are inherently flat, and if you are trying to portray them "flat shaded" then great, but here's a quick example of how you can use more tones to bring more volume into it

just scribbled in quickly with a large pixel brush, colour grabbed from the lips, and is far from pillow shading, the shading on your first was inconsistent to a light source and the highlight 2 tone with banded shading, so don't avoid highlights altogether just those types of highlights, always try keeping the light source consistent

also figured it might be helpful so i quickly whipped up this


to show you what you can get away with and to illustrate different lighting angles and intensity of highlights (and thus the light being shone)

note though that it's haphazard and rushed so don't follow it too rigorously as I'm sure it wasn't as well thought out as it should be relating to the volumes, but hopefully it's helpful

[Bissle]

A lot of improvement all around: colors, anatomy, and all. Apologies for not being more clear; my edit was very rough and so didn't include highlighting, but for a piece that is going to be complete, highlighting is necessary to avoid flatness.  As far as adding more volume, Grimsane's edit is an extremely comprehensive guide.


Good work. Hoping to see more. 

[trexrell]

Very cool I was kinda hesitant to add another shade because of the pillow shading thing. I've seen to have had trouble in the past with things like that. But I see again (for the moment) what I need to do thanks a lot!

[trexrell]

I ran into yet another problem how would I color this hair? Its suppose to be bangs. 

[Grimsane]

that's bordering on pillow shading in some areas

avoid buffering every highlight with a midtone, it creates banding and pillowshading, and without it it increases the contrast of the volumes and can be used to good effect, you can use it as AA but as a form of shading not so much, here to illustrate



edit:



I didn't fix it in the chin though, but hopefully you get what I mean

[API-Beast]

Guys that the second time pillow shading is misused here, it wasn't pillow shading (just baaad shading - fancy name I know) in the first post and what you are referring to isn't pillow shading either.

Pillow Shading is one specific way of shading something coming from lack of knowledge about shape and light. Making edges darker won't lead to pillow shading and is in fact a big part of more realistic shading styles as it  greatly increases the sense of depth if done correctly. It is something that happens to a small degree in real life due to the diffuse nature of most lights.

[Grimsane]

I'm not entirely a fan of terminology but it is widely referred to as that, even in isolation, the principle of "pillow shading" is still present in what you call baaad shading.

pillow analogies aside bordering (buffering) shapes (clusters) uniformly like that and reinforcing pixel banding = bad end result,  regardless of what you call it and how much of it is present.

[API-Beast]

Banding is bad, but still has nothing to do with pillow shading, it's one very specific type of shading and the only thing that yields it is ignorance. If it is not exactly pillow shading then don't use that word

[Helm]

Pillow shading easily leads to banding, but they're different things, yes. Anywhere where you shade in a small pixel space with a lot of colors is prone to get bandy.

As to the image



I think you girl is suffering from too much face, not enough cranium. This is a common error for artists because face features are expressive, and they make them bigger and the head is just a canvas for them, but it looks off once you notice it. That's my big contribution, really. The rest is just facial features edits which might or might not be of use to you.

[trexrell]

Cool. Yeah it does seem like she needs more skull lol. But my biggest problem right now is indeed shading the hair. I'm pretty much following the examples on this thread for shading techniques so anything I see here that looks correct I definitely incorporate it into my work

[Bissle]

Rough edit, working from Helm's:



Aside from the size of the cranium, as far as the bangs, try to make them look like they stick out and slope from the head... though it really depends on what kind of hairstyle you want her to have. I tried to do that as well, but it looks more like a beehive. 

[trexrell]

Is that the complete way one would shade that type of hair in pixel art?

[Bissle]

Strictly speaking. there really is no "complete" or "correct" way to do that in pixel art, at least not a way that's really different from drawing by hand. The best way to figure out how to shade it is to reference. Look up pictures of women with the hairstyle you want her to have; observe how the bangs slope from the forehead, observe how light hits her hair. You'll get the hang of it with practice. 

[trexrell]

Cool thanks that's pretty much the answer I was hoping for lol.