Character Portrait [C+C]

[Azuyre]

Trying to get a bit of practice in so I made some pixel art based on a sketch. The character's name is Red and the sketch was done by Endling from dA.

[Ashbad]

5min edit:





The piece is looking good -- still needs some work, though.  Two problems I notice mainly are some weak color choices and quite a bit of banding.  I did a quick stab at some possibly better colors -- mainly, I increased the brightness and shifted hues between colors on the ramp.  I gave the sword-thing a bit of a hue shift as well, which might have been overdone, but goes to show that some shifting makes metal objects a bit more interesting and warm/cold (depending on what colors used -- this looks warm because I used more warm colors).  As for the banding, I didn't get to fix much, but the selective outlining on the arms isn't working out so well, and internally there are a lot of "fat pixel" bandings -- not so many staircases along the borders, so nice job there.  Two main areas of concern are the head and the hair, which have the most banding.  I also think the face could stand out more (maybe more pronounced facial features, like bright eyes?)

EDIT:





Made a few extra quick edits.  Started mending some of the banding to show a few possible fixes for that.  Did a quick redo of the hair -- the way you shaded it made it rather flat.  Fixed some of the AA and selective outlining (I assume that's the thing you were going for, so I made it use that more consistently throughout.)  Red's face looked weird, and I figured out why -- the eye furthest from us looks a bit out of perspective from the rest of the face; however, I could be wrong, so I just made that edit so you can decide.

I'd also suggest dropping your color count, you have a few colors that can be merged -- you're at 29 colors now, you can drop to 24 with no differences to really be seen.  In fact, you could even drop down to 16, and it looks good:

[Azuyre]

Thanks for all the help so far.

I'm not sure how I didn't realize that half my colors were similar to another. Anyway, I've edited it a bit based on what you've said:
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I went over the whole thing looking for banding and made some fixes based on some of the stuff you did in your edits. I think it's looking a lot better then the first version, thanks again for the help so far.

I wasn't quite sure about your edit of the eye, I was mainly going by the sketch and the angle doesn't seem too off on that. Though I think there probably is something I could change to make it look a bit better. I'll try a few things and see what I come up with.

[Ashbad]

Looking better so far!   I'd venture to say that the highlight on the hair may be a bit *too* contrasted to the midtone, but other than that, the new color choices brighten the whole thing up.  I agree about the eye (now), probably not the best change I made there -- but no harm with trying out something to see if it works, I suppose    Not every experiment is going to yield an improvement, as that edit to the eye showed.

EDIT: In addition, I'd maybe say to slightly darken the midtone of the skin more, but it's not a huge flaw or anything, and would be fine as-is in that sense.  I think the next set of improvements would be to fix some of the banding issues that remain, after which the piece will start looking even more polished   G'luck!

[Friend]

don't do selective outlining.  Use a Background to check your line art.  I cleaned up everything.  Also avoid using bright pixels alone.  Here's an edit, you can make it transparent again if you'd like:

also, work on making the sword whole more round