[WIP] Arcade Inside Out View

[Imagician]

Hello pixelation folks,

haven't been (privately) active in pixel art for ages, but recently decided to kick off some self-initiated project 

I'm (currently) planning this as a series of motives, where you see people (maybe also characters from games) playing arcade games, but viewed from inside the screen (I think Wreck It Ralph had some similar scenes). I probably like to have it done as big posters when finished (to hang it up at least for myself in my flat), so I took the freedom and already magnified the WIP (since final pixels are planned to be really chunky):



It's only a small beginning, but there are already some things I think I'm not perfectly happy with yet, so I thought I'd go for some c&c from you.

• final size will probably be 110x154
• colors are subject to change (but feel free to comment on), also planning on adding hue shifting/color ramps and fancy multicolored lighting later (scene is planned to be dark actually, with colorful lighting by more arcade machines)
• her hands seem to have to much detail/contrast to me, in opposition to the more "stylized" faces and hair
• not perfectly fond with reflexes and resulting structure in her hair.. maybe
• I think I'm okay with the banding on his shirt... kind of
• I'm planning on making her "inner" (right) side darker, too (as his)
• the strong symmetry (mirroring) is intended/considered part of the "stylization"
• his shades were intended to have a reflection of the game they're playing (mabye pong)...not sure if I'll find an aesthetically pleasing solution for this

Looking forward to your thoughts on that and anything else you'd like to mention

[Imagician]

Just decided to clean up her arms and his shirt a little. Think it's better like that. guess the premise was not to have a number of evenly spaced color areas, but to decide one "main" colors (or rather, shading levels) for areas, so this one has the focus for a certain space, and it's not all messed up (e.g. see here forearms). well, that was my learning, I guess.



C&C still welcome!

[Alex Sinigaglia]

Where does the light source come from?

[YellowLime]

Hey, nice pixelart

Well, my major nitpick here would be the lighting.
Since they're at an arcade cabinet, the light is coming at them from the front. It would hardly be color-neutral, too.
And arcades aren't renowned for being very good-lit places, either
Although, if I were in your shoes, I'd have a hard time redoing all of the lighting
(PRE-POST EDIT: I should have read all of the original post )

I'm not a fan of the neck shading you used for the guy. I don't totally understand the two lines that go down his neck.
I guess they're either defining the man's Adam's apple, or maybe his clavicles (reminds me of the overly used anime-style neck-lines )

The girl's pose makes kinda sense, if she's supposed to be supporting her elbows on the cabinet.
If she isn't, then it looks like an awkward anime-style swooning pose (I'm sounding like a real anti-anime nazi, I know )

In any case, could you please upload a 1:1 resolution version?
This site has a very neat pixel-resizing feature-thing very useful for studying the effect of a pixelart piece at different sizes.

[Imagician]

@Alex Sinigaglia:

Hah My approach on this in this case is: For the beginning trying to be neutral about the light source / kinda frontal, because I'm planning on adding more complex lighting later.

Since it's meant to be some kind of nightly arcade hall scene, there will be plenty of colorful lights and I will then decide on which to have an effect on what. I'm not really strict about it, meaning I will take the liberty of artistic license or "cheating", as long as it looks fine. For example, there will be some lighting coming from the sides, which will make the couple darker in the inner side of them, which I already kind of started doing on his shirt. I will also modify the lighting on their faces and hair later. For now, my focus is on creating the shapes.

But you're right, it's definitely a thing to keep an eye on.

[Imagician]

Okay, Alex and YellowLime, I think I get your point about the light stuff. I was also fantasizing about having them lit really strong from the front and a bit from downwards, like when you have people sitting around a campfire telling eerie stories . Maybe I'll alter that at some later point.

About his neck, well... The center thing is supposed to be his neck, on the sides one can look down (since they are supposed to be a little leaning front) on his clavicles. It's a skinny neck, alright, but that's at least partly intention, since I wanted them to look a bit cute (big heads, small bodies...). Maybe I cheated to much there; I'll try to play around there some more.

Haven't decided yet if she's leaning on the cabinet or making that exaggerated happy or surprised move (yeah, like in Anime.. I wouldn't mind ).

About the resizing: One thing is that it's really meant to be blown up big in the end as poster in A0 or something I imagine. So I'd really like to make sure it's judged in big pixels. The other thing is, I know about the resizing, but at least Chrome (which I am using) blurrs the pixels then

Nevertheless, I'm uploading a 1:1, so maybe whoever feels like it, can mess around with it to try and fix some problems they see.



thanks for the feedback so far

[Alex Sinigaglia]

The image is in .jpg/.jpeg (but fortunately it didn't lose quality). Always remember to save the sprites/pixel pieces in .png.

Hmm, yeah, sorry for this post.

I'm going to edit it a bit then.

[Imagician]

Oops, you're right. I uploaded it on tinypic and didn't give that much thought. I've seen people use imgur, but isn't it automatically public there then?

[Alex Sinigaglia]

Personally I would suggest Photobucket. But Imgur is not bad, although I don't know the private/public settings for it. I know that with Photobucket you can make your library private.

Well, here I show my edit; I tried to change the lightsource but I bet something is wrong in my edits.


The line on the last step (under the man) can be deleted, I made it because the white colour is also used for the background.

[Imagician]

Hey, thanks a lot, I really appreciate you put in some effort in my piece to try and improve the lighting

For the 1st step I see you modified her underarms and her hair a little. Her arms were already a bit more sophisticatedly shaded at first (see my first post), but I just thought it looked to messy when zoomed in (and it's planned to blow this up on a poster), so I simplified it. maybe I should point out that realism (e.g. concerning the shading/lighting) isn't my top priority, while of course it shouldn't be looking weird or wrong either. Nevertheless, the arms edit are what I like the most (and I'll see if I probably take a learning from there an incorporate it into the work), but I must admit the hair edits are not so much my cup of tea

On the first step removed the, let's call it "circle of reflection" that I'd really like to have, which can sometimes also be seen in the hair of, Mr. Spock, Mirelle Matthieu or often on Anime girls' hair (yeah, I really like this hair thingy ). So I'd rather leave this in and be not 100% realistic about the lighting, as far as the "cheating" in favor of this stylistic device doesn't really jump you in the face as a bad mistake.




It's similar with his hair I must say. I'm rather fond of the way it looks shiny and reflective; something that's lost in your edit in my opinion. Also, you added some extra locks under the big waves that go sideways from the split, and I'd rather have no extra hair there, but instead make the impression that the hair really kinda goes up with nothing extra underneath (it's funny how, as an artist, one also has to be a hair stylist and so many other things )

His shirt and his glasses... don't know if they're more realistic now, but at least they look less "intriguing"/more simple to me now. I'm also not sure what the right white triangle (the one coming down from his inner side's armpit) is supposed to tell about the shape... looks kinda funny to me.

Nevertheless, as I said, thank you I think there's something in there I can have a closer look on for sure