AuthorTopic: GR#186 - Betrayer - Sprite Process  (Read 20969 times)

Offline Gil

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #20 on: April 02, 2014, 02:00:42 pm
The arm is pillow-shaded, which is a problem right now. Also, I'm having trouble figuring out your light source, mainly because there's no cast shadows. Like, for example, shouldn't the axe cast a shadow on the arm?

Offline cels

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #21 on: April 02, 2014, 02:36:49 pm
The arm is pillow-shaded, which is a problem right now. Also, I'm having trouble figuring out your light source, mainly because there's no cast shadows. Like, for example, shouldn't the axe cast a shadow on the arm?
Thanks for the advice!

The light source is on his front left side, from above. So I tried to make everything brighter on his left side (our right). I think you'll see that if you look closer, but I suppose there are areas where I've made mistakes which are throwing you off. Perhaps the metal?

Since I'm not working from a reference with great resemblance, and since I'm working with a somewhat limited palette, I admit I'm having trouble showing the light source, while also showing depth and illustrating the shape of the armour. Especially for the metal, because I want to do shiny, polished metal, instead of dull, brushed metal. And figuring out the way the light reflects is tricky.

The arm has the opposite problem, because sharp highlights makes it look like it's covered with metal instead of skin, and with 4 colours I found it hard to create depth while indicating the light source clearly. Now that you mention it, the lower arm and upper arm have conflicting light sources.

The axe should cast a shadow on the arm and/or hand. That didn't even occur to me before. Though I can't really imagine where it would fall and what it would look like - I don't have an eye for that stuff yet. I suppose his helmet should also cast a bigger shadow around his neck.

As usual, I have overextended myself in terms of difficulty level, so any kind of suggestions would be helpful.

Offline Manupix

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #22 on: April 02, 2014, 04:46:58 pm
Shading edit. Didn't really bother with pixel placement (MSPaint on laptop touchpad sucks) and anatomy.



The axe shadow falls on wrist, hand and knee. Roughly fixed light on arm, legs, head, taking into account orientation of surfaces relative to light. For instance, the upper arm is in full light but angled away so the light is more grazing (= less bright) than on shoulder or forearm. Similarly, there is a difference in brightness between both legs.
The visible side of the axe is in shadow (could be deeper). I failed at knuckles, don't really understand their volume.

Your metal reflections are quite good. However glossy metal only reflects directly the light source: any surface that is not a specular should be dark. This is generally not so nice so additional reflections are drawn without respect of light source: surprisingly there's no problem with that, brains are not so good at light consistency in this particular instance.

Offline Gil

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #23 on: April 02, 2014, 10:18:33 pm
I was going to do an edit, but I probably can't do a better job than Manupix, so yeah, study that one :)

Offline Fizzick

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #24 on: April 03, 2014, 01:55:57 am

While perhaps a little too small, I might do something a little more like this for the hand.
Currently it looks to me slightly twisted towards the viewer?

Offline cels

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #25 on: April 03, 2014, 03:31:42 pm
I was going to do an edit, but I probably can't do a better job than Manupix
Nope, you probably can't.

Reverse psychology, see?  :D

@Manupix, that edit was extremely helpful. It'll take me a while to fix the issues you've worked with, but I'll get it done. I feel like I see the light in the end of the tunnel now, thanks.

@Fizzick, thanks, I'll have a look at the right hand.

UPDATE:



Still not done resolving all the issues that Manupix adressed, but I'm getting there. Changed the tassles from green to blue. They're supposed to be blue, but I thought green would give better contrast, and now I've gone back to blue. Do the colours work? I think so.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2014, 11:38:03 pm by cels »

Offline HarveyDentMustDie

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #26 on: April 06, 2014, 11:30:31 pm
Here is my attempt of edit (it's sloppy but idea is there). From the beginning of this tread I wanted to create edit of this, but somehow I was repelled by strange posture of character and my lack of information about him.

I still didn't solve awkwardness in my eyes, but I think that I've fix couple things, especially that fist position. If not, at least I tried. :)

Offline Mr. Fahrenheit

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #27 on: April 07, 2014, 01:56:57 am
I feel like this picture could use a focal point of some sort. Its pretty tiring to look at. Everything has high contrast, similar colours, tons of details strewn around and it is just sort of hard to take it in. Leaving some areas less rendered out could be a good thing.

Offline cels

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #28 on: April 14, 2014, 03:39:06 am
Thanks for your help, guys. Very helpful indeed!

@HarveyDentMustDie: It looks like I would have to make some drastic changes in order to solve the issues you're referring to. At this point, I don't want to start from scratch, but I've tried to make a compromise by working on the position and angle of the legs. His right hand seems to be in a no man's land where no compromise is possible, so I guess I'll have to do something else with the right hand. Right now, I think I'll let him hold a helmet of some vanquished foe. He's supposed to collect skulls, so...

@Mr. Fahrenheit: Maybe just reducing the contrast in the red areas will help a little bit. There was also a lot of high saturation colours, so I can see where you're coming from. I'm not sure if this is an improvement, but I gave it a shot.

Offline Manupix

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Re: Betrayer (sci fi portrait)

Reply #29 on: April 14, 2014, 09:52:18 pm
You have something here.
What I see: make that skull the shakespearian focus of the piece!  :o
Extend the arm so that you can legitimately make the hand and skull bigger. The wing skull may interfere: skip it if it does.
The skull should be seen slightly from below, because point of view is something between knee and waist high (right now it's facing straight).
Put it in full light, decrease brightness elsewhere except maybe the face and a shaft or two of light.
Lower the axe and axe-arm as they no longer are vital to the pose.
Also I agree with Mr. Fahrenheit: now that you have a focus, think composition again and mercilessly remove any detail that doesn't help with it.