This Slime is Annoying Me

[yaomon17]

I'm trying to get a good slime off this:

But I ended up with this crud:

Help?

[Charlieton]

More contrast within the palette could help make it pop.



Sorry for my messy edit.

[Satsume]

probably i the last user that can give you tips, but imho the most slime types have most vivid-light colors for simulate jelly, i've made a sketched edit of your work.



hope it's useful

[Cyangmou]

I like the edit progress of this here. Charlieton added a nice highlight and Satsume captured the jelly effect pretty nice. However I think it's a good idea to use a photo reference to get an idea how the material works. it has huge areas of glossy highlights and some cool reflections. The photo was obviously taken in a bright white room, but I don't know the lighting situation which the sprite should have. However it is a good idea too learn how the material works and apply this knowledge to your art. The jelly is also semi-transparent which is a relatively complicate effect to illustrate. To bring the research down I just took the material which looked in terms of colors and consistency right to me.

I also  added some material spheres to illustrate the characteristics of all the materials which should make it easier to understand whare the differencies are exactly.

For my edit I also heavily referenced the form of the black white one, especially the eyes and the "belly" area are really different in yours yaomon. I also made 3 WIP stages. Th elast one isn't polished but it already shows the direction how it could look like if you are trying to imitate a material.

[yaomon17]

Thanks for the edits! I really liked the sunken eyes from satsumes and the inner mouth of cyangmou's. I will draw up a new one soon.

[yaomon17]

Here is a quick sketch before I clean it up. I increased the contrast (thanks Charelieton!) and varies the hues larger. I tried to make the mouth shape more interesting and added the "stomach" from Cyangmou's edit (which is an awesome idea by the way). I implemented the messy/slimy bottom from Satsumes along with a border like bottom from Cyanmou's.
Should I clean it up?

[cirpons]

Here is a quick sketch before I clean it up. I increased the contrast (thanks Charelieton!) and varies the hues larger. I tried to make the mouth shape more interesting and added the "stomach" from Cyangmou's edit (which is an awesome idea by the way). I implemented the messy/slimy bottom from Satsumes along with a border like bottom from Cyanmou's.
Should I clean it up?

You could take a closer look at Cyangmous edit, i mean it still doesnt look jelly, like try expanding the highlight areas, and the back should be lighter due to the semi-transparency of jelly.

[r1k]

I dont think he said he wanted it to look like jelly necceserily though.  There are other texture options for slimes too.  Heres some reference photos I found:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/64/157249722_94e1436ac0.jpg
http://www.mayang.com/textures/Nature/images/Mud/pond_scum_5140175.JPG
http://lukebray.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/ooze.jpg
http://www.superpants.net/guarslimebath1.JPG

I think the new one looks good.  Though I would make the outline around the left/top lighter to reflect the light source.

If you want it to look like jelly though it should look stiffer/ less melty.

[pistachio]

A much larger issue, the slime still lacks construction. The smaller slime in Cyangmou's edit circled in blue is one simple shape, much like a pac-man ghost, of which you can easily see the basic construction. If you went ahead with it you would build sub-blobs around it like clay before shading and maybe sub-blobs on that, which is what Cyangmou's larger slime used for the edit pretty much did.

As for shading there is one thing that seems to be lacking in the edits. Look into subsurface scattering, the key to making jelly look real jelly (plus speculars). Put short, this involves making midtones more saturated than shadows or anything above midtones (especially in hard light) and making areas where light penetrates lighter than where it doesn't.

[yaomon17]

This is it cleaned up.
Err, I will attemped at saturating the mid tones.

Not sure if I did it correctly :\