AuthorTopic: Skull Practice  (Read 2880 times)

Offline MadMonkey

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Skull Practice

on: January 12, 2013, 08:56:55 am
I've been working on this to improve and practice after taking a long break from pixel art, as I'd like to eventually make from half decent graphics for my small game projects.

I feel like I'm just filling in "blank" spaces with dithering because I'm not sure what else to. Mainly near the upper jaw/nose and top of the skull.
Other areas I feel need some work is colours, highlighting in the "teeth" and such, but I'm not sure where to go from here.

I'll continue working on it, but some feedback at this stage would be helpful.



Process


Current

Offline Applzor

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Re: Skull Practice

Reply #1 on: January 12, 2013, 11:57:46 am
the dithering on the top is in a perfectly straight line across the skull. try rounding it out a bit

Offline pistachio

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Re: Skull Practice

Reply #2 on: January 12, 2013, 11:58:18 am


(Quick 5min sloppy edit and also spooky color job)

Skulls, in actuality, have a lot of planes and are pretty complex and for this reason you might want to use more reference. But to successfully capture the bony essence of a skull you're gonna have to use planes, just simplified down and with toyed/cartoony proportions.

Also try to envision lighting as based on these planes, which face towards the light, face it less to varying degrees, or completely don't. Thinking of a box or a simple primitive under basically the same lighting situation as your image is a good place to start. Which sides catch the light, and how much of it? Now apply that to whatever you are drawing. A good but basic example of this is the nose ridge in the edit and in many side-lit pictures of skulls. (When drawing rounder objects, planes can be smoothed out, but are still the most reliable, solid basis to start with.)
« Last Edit: January 14, 2013, 10:08:52 am by pistachio »

Offline Facet

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Re: Skull Practice

Reply #3 on: January 13, 2013, 10:47:20 pm
Hey, welcome back from ~7 years ago Madmonkey!

Anyway, try forcing yourself to work tonally by doing as much as possible with a big brush to establish form (via the planes Pistachio mentions) before doing anything on the level of the single pixel or line.

Always define form with shadow foremost (bar chrome or a mirror etc.). Highlights, in being reflections, are more indicative of surface quality; they won't do much on their own in most cases.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2013, 01:39:36 am by Facet »