C64 Knight Portrait

[AlcopopStar]

Hello forum,

So i'm doing some c64 fantasy portraits for a client. Here is the first among 6.

Current:
The Necromancer,



Finished:
The Knight,

Peasant Girl



The pixels are double width. And I should point out that the black is a slightly off blue for the sake of the engine it's going into.

whadoyathink?

(crossposted here)

[wolfenoctis]

Quick edit, I think the eye slit should be a little higher up, and helm should be a little taller. Also is there a reason you have double pixel and single pixel size lines and clusters everywhere ? ( I don't know anything about c64 restrictions, if it has something to do with that) Because its causing a lot of banding all over the piece:

I adjusted the helm size to show you what I mean, also the cross on the helm doesn't line up. Hope it helps 

[AlcopopStar]

Hey wolf,

thanks for your reply. So I raised the eye slot and helmet height a touch, It might need to be higher still but for now i'll leave it alone. Oh I also fixed up the cross section, the reason it was off was that the head was meant to be slightly tilted, which may have been a bit ambitious given these restrictions.

To my understanding the limits, beyond the pallet, are that the "pixels" must be 2 pixels in width and 1 in height. if that makes sense.

Anyway here is my latest update,

[wolfenoctis]

Don't know if I got all the pixel sizes right, one of the more experienced artists here would have to say. I tried making him a little more shiny and straightened out some lines. It's still a little rough though but it might give you some ideas 

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Are you following all the c64 restrictions alco? Looking really cool so far.

[AlcopopStar]

Ahh, no one shades armor like you wolf! Okay I I tried ramping up the contrast and making things a little more metal like in your version. I think part of the problem is that I was following the shading on my reference pictures too carefully (which was dull metal), where as I should of gone for something a bit more "ultra-real" like you did. Looks a lot better.

Okay so here is my attempt, (2 variations)




Not 100% on the colour ramps for the gold yet.

@Mr. Fahrenheit, Thanks, the only two restrictions I've been told to follow are the ones I've mentioned. Are there more?

[Helm]

Absolutely. The simplest mode (multicolor) has this great restriction: For every 8x8 cell (4x8, if you look at them like widepixels), you can only have 3 colors. Plus, you get one color that you can use everywhere, which must be the same for the whole picture. So it's 4 max colors per cell.

Don't be afraid of this limitation. You can easily apply it for your picture with minimal changes, and often the changes that it'll force you to make will open your mind to new shapes of clusters and smart solutions to problems. Most of the time we use too many colors. The c64 can teach a pixel artist that they can do more with less in a lot of cases.

Also a handy thing: if you're working in a way that might result to stray square pixels in such an image, make a habit of compressing the 320 width of the image to 160, then back to 320. Do it before the final image is produced as well. That'll take care of any stray square pixels.

As to your image as it stands right now, I really like it. There are many little bits I would change, but with an entry into the c64 I would suggest first to make a few more pictures, and to do them in multicolor or hi-res and then work on the nitpicks.

[AlcopopStar]

Hey Helm,

Thanks for that information . My latest version should adhere to those restrictions. (barring any small mistakes) And I think it looks better for it too.

[ptoing]

I assumed grey (aka mid grey) to be the global colour. Very few errors, and all of these should be pretty easily fixed.


Good stuff, I really like this too.

[AlcopopStar]

Ahhh thanks for the sharp eye ptoing! i've fixed those areas up.


I guess i'm ready to call this one done then i'll get to work on the next. Thanks again guys! i've learned a lot.

[PypeBros]

yum! I can already see the kind of bouncing scroller and hear the SID square wave pulsing here

anatomically speaking, isn't his left shoulder a bit too thin and curiously bending forwards ?

[Facet]

I was just gonna say why so monotone? There's loads of subtle ramps in the palette, you can go a bit mad swapping out greys.

Obviously my exaggerated example isn't nearly 4 colours a cell yet, and er, looking back probably wouldn't work as a talking head, but it's something to think about.

[Jeremy]

Picking up on what Facet said, here's a more colourful edit:

The blue is the global colour, I think it's got 4 colours per 8x8, but I might have missed some spots

Some of the single-pixel details (e.g. the white spot on the neck) could do with smoother transitions. Maybe try to focus on more clusters than vertical lines?
And the inside of the visor is screaming out for more AA!

[AlcopopStar]

@Facet & Jeremy

If this was more of a personal piece rather then a game piece for sure I would go a bit crazier on the colour ramps. Though i'm not sure if i'd be able to pick out ramps quite that good.

I think I'll probably leave the knight alone for now, not because the crits aren't relevant but because I can only work on these for so long.

So here is portrait 2 of 6, from knight to peasant girl.



She is still WIP, her torso and hat especially. But I'd love to get some more feedback on her. Thanks again for all the great responses so far!

[ErekT]

Both of them look great I think. I tried a little edit to make the knight's chin more square and the girl's eyebrows a bit less prominent, along with some other stuff. Didn't pay much attention to the c64 limits.

[Ryumaru]

Just wanted to say that the peasant girl has some really sharp pixeling. Very nice expression with some very hardcore limitations. 

[Helm]

So, first of all, that's a lovely expression on the girl, very alive and human. That's more than a lot of people ever achieve, so congrats just on that level. My main piece of advice would be to scale back a lot on the dithering, and only use it as a tapered end to a brush-stroke.



Really think about what you're achieving with dithering, and what you're sacrificing to get it. Also not a big fan of grey highlights but eh, this is the c64 palette and that's what you have to work with, I'd just make them significantly smaller and stylized.

[ptoing]

Strongly agree with Helm on the dither. The more I do pixelart, the less I use dither. I would say as a rule of thumb, if you are dithering, chances are that the texture you want to convey can be achieved better without dither. And I think you will agree with this if you look at what Helm did esp on the hair and cloth.

Great stuff though, looking forward to where this is going.

[AlcopopStar]

I actually very much agree with your points on dithering. Ever since I returned to pixeling it's been something i've been more or less avoiding. My general ethos toward painting is to avoid rendering forms and more attempt to imply them (if that makes sense :s). I don't feel like dithering in general is particularly conducive to that form of shading.

That said I was in some what of a bind as to how to make that limited pallet work with this one, and I figured dithering to be the answer, fortunately helm has shown a really elegant way of handling the shading, something I tried my best to emulate in this edit;



There is still some dither in there, but I have tried to keep it marginal and can reduce it further if need be. Thanks again for all the wonderful comments. I am learning a world of stuff.

edit:
I was worried the harsh lighting might have ruined the nuance of the expression somewhat, so I added some quick variants. Which works the best? I honestly can't tell :x

[Jeremy]

[...]Though i'm not sure if i'd be able to pick out ramps quite that good.

With metal like that, you could probably choose any ramp with a decent range of values and have it work ok

here is a little edit of the face, particularly pay attention to the jawline - I turned the brown outline into AA. I think with stuff like that you're not taking note of widepixels' unique challenges; it would look fine if you were working at a normal aspect ratio but here it's kinda bandy.

The other changes are basically to my preferences, but I do think the mouth is a bit too far to the left. My edit addresses that somewhat, but it might be a bit twisted now


I don't know how you'd deal with the largest neck highlight but it's super fuzzy atm.

[Tapsu]

I would rather not change the mouth but cut off some of her left cheek.
In my eyes, the problem seems to look like trying to draw the meaning rather than what is visible.
I mean, the side of the cheek exists and you are trying to draw it, but really it is not visible from this angle.

[Sohei]

I think that eyes are too high.
  ->>

[ptoing]

Sorry, but no. That looks really weird. If the eyes are too high, they are not that much too high. 1 or 2 pixels perhaps, but what you did looks really weird to me, Sohei.

[Ryumaru]

I agree that the eyes are a bit high; but I do find sohei's edit less attractive personally.
What could be done is to simply increase the size of the head wrap as opposed to a lengthening of her entire cranium.

[Tapsu]

From AlcopopStar's latest post, with removal of the part of the cheek that should in my opinion be not visible because it should be curved away from the viewer.

[wolfenoctis]

The face proportions are slightly off, from the bottom of the chin to the bottom of the nose should be about 1/3 of the face (not the head mind you). So too is the region from the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose and from the eyebrows to the hairline also 1/3 each. Also I would do away with the majority of those lines, simplify a bit. Here's an edit to illustrate:

Also noticed that the higlight for the eyes was in the centre of the eye, moved it to top right. Hope it helps 

[AlcopopStar]

Thanks for all the responses guys.

I've made all the changes I feel necessary to the peasant women. There were a few edits that were proportionally more correct but I felt lost a bit of the images charm. I went for the middle ground I felt comfortable with and had time for.



Beyond this I have started work on a third portrait, the necromancer. I originally started with a somewhat sever look but was later asked to give her a bit of a sweeter disposition.