Young pixel artist looking for critique!

[LarkoftheRiver]

Go back and fix mistakes to develop!

Edit,

Said that because it can get tiring to make a whole new sprite when you want to do something better. If it works for you go ahead

Also, this time do a tree or a house or something.

I'm working on this one's shading mostly, this time I scrapped the shading layers and made a small pallet. I'm having trouble making it three or four colors, though. Here is is so far, thoughts?

I might also pull out something I did at school out of boredom and rework through it; it was a forest scene.

You're still sort of relying on texture, in the sense that, in the example workflow you gave, the black color-ramp alone used like 6 colors if you include the black outlines. Try forcing yourself not to do that, working with only 3 or 4 colors and trying to achieve a cel-shaded look. Focusing just on the stomach-region of the animal, your shading seems to be almost a gradient; you're trying to shade realistically but in reality you're just picking the side of the silhouette closest to the lightsource and then generating a gradient based on what you consider the light end and dark end of the shape. Focus on form; force yourself to draw in terms of concrete lines differentiating the light sections and dark sections, instead of your current wibbly-wobbly attempts to avoid committing to discrete regions with texture and weird almost-dithering techniques.

Consider using less outlines as well. On sprites that small, an outline is a lot of space, so to speak. You can still achieve meaningful separation of regions by making them different in contrast and color, removing the need to use the blunt sledgehammer-like tool that is heavy outlining.

Generally speaking, outlines are part of the work itself, but you seem to be rendering them as if they were separate from the internal coloring- a phenomenon which seems like you're 'afraid' to touch the sacrosanct lineart. Don't be! Lineart is there to help your readability, you don't have to color 'around' the lines or anything. Consider trying some sel-out techniques or even making line-free designs.

Also, I'd recommend you not use NPA tools like luminosity or overlay layers for the moment. Practice working with pure pixel tools; by limiting your own toolset, you restrain yourself in the same way that martial artists might go about their day with training weights. When you get used to limitations, you'll suddenly find that your usage of NPA layers will go from being a crutch you leaned on to a tool that you can utilize to true effectiveness.

(Also, don't be so nervous! It's kind of obvious that you're obsessively formatting your posts and trying to look neat and professional, as if you were presenting yourself in tuxedo to some sort of highly formal event. Don't bother with that, lol. Make yourself comfortable and relax, Pixelation isn't a place with tons of in-group cliques and unspoken rules or anything like that.)

I'll leave the dithering out now, for the time being and see how it works. Do you have any tips for form, though? I will work on the "line blending" (no idea how to put that into words, lol)
I try to look more professional when I first join a site.. I get really nervous on how people will take me so... and especially on a site like this where the majority of the users are older than me.. its really daunting to some extent for me to put my work here...

Edit- Okay, so I went outside my comfort zone and got rid of the lineart and reshaded the entire thing. I'm so glad I did, thanks for the suggestions!

It looks far cleaner and crisp now, probably because I didn't attempt dithering and colored over the lines. Is the form better, just from changing the shading, or will that require redoing the lineart as well? I still think I'm using too many colors too.. but I'm not sure how I can fix that.

[Manupix]

Hi there, welcome =)

Just a few pointers in addition to the good advice you already got:

- check this awesome tuto if you haven't already.

- about palettes: yours are made up of independent 'color ramps'. You need to tweak them into organic, connected palettes, as explained here.



- about shading: I'd remove all 'decorations' on the sprite (yellow marks, red eyes) and shade it the best you can according to a light source. You can then add those back afterwards, but at this point they'll just interfere with the more basic work.
Some peeps find it useful to shade in grayscale and apply color later; you might try that.

Can't wait to see where you're going with this =)

Edit: posted before seeing your last edit.
It's better, but not there yet. Think of the most basic dog shapes, get those right first, add detail later.
It's nowhere near easy, because it supposes you have a clear idea of dog shapes = dog anatomy! Use references, lots of them.
And yes, too many colors. Again, start simple, then add them one by one when you really need them.

Edit edit: your light source is not clearly defined. Could be nice for a diffuse light atmosphere, but you should start with basic sunlight, 45° in the upper left corner

[Drazelic]

(also don't work on a white or transparent background, work with a solid medium-tone-greyish background layer and add transparency in later. right now because you have a white background, the lighter top of the dog's back is blending with the background and creating an undesirable banding-ish effect.)

What manupix said. Also, working with black is hard, as far as form goes, because everything's kind of dark. For the sake of tutorializing, it's way easier for you to do something in a medium-tone so you've got more freedom to move around with regards to the value of your colors.



See how much easier it is to see the form of a thing with a light base color, rather than a dark base color?

[LarkoftheRiver]

Changed the background from white to gray, thanks!

Here's what I have so far.

I'm still really struggling with the color pallet though, and I think part of that is because I've always used a bunch of colors for my digital cartoonish things and paintings.

Should I go ahead and pick a new subject and make the colors lighter?

[Manupix]

Should I go ahead and pick a new subject ?

Nope, keep working on it until you get it right! 

BUT, it's ok to take a break working on something else for a while, or not working at all. There's no hurry, you won't fix it in the next hour

[LarkoftheRiver]

Okay yes sir.

I'm trying to think about the form here before I fix my pallet issues. I think I'm going to mess with the legs and paws and see what I can do

[Manupix]

OMG YOU'RE MAKING JPEGs NOOOOOOO
Never ever use jpeg for pixel art! Jpeg is a lossy compression format, it messes with your colors, even at highest quality!
Means you can't easily use tools like magic wand or paint bucket, among other problems.
Only use png or gif!

[Ambivorous]

Hi Lark, welcome to Pixelation.

When they say "define the forms" they mean that you should pick one light source and only shade areas where that light can touch on your sprite. This gives the sprite a feeling of 3Dness, almost as though it was rendered from a 3D model. You use your light and dark colour to draw these shapes onto your sprite and it gives the sprite 'form'.

Here's an example using your sprite (I fiddled with the colours for more contrast):


Also for the love of all things holy, never save any pixel art as .jpg ever, please. Always .gif or .png, otherwise it is difficult for us to work on. Edit: Ninja'd.
Otherwise yeah just chill, post some art. Peeps will help if they are able.

[LarkoftheRiver]

.png
I feel like I just did the unspeakable (and I probably did). I wonder if I learned anything from my fooling in paint so long ago. lol

Okay, so for forms, should I only use one layer of shading, rather than two that I normally do? Should I even highlight at all? this just became so much harder than it was yesterday lol

Edit- Changed a few things with the highlights, and hopefully defined the light source more.

I'm trying to make it shine on the left, in the face.

[Drazelic]

Your light-source still doesn't quite make that much sense. What's that curved highlight in the torso supposed to represent? Because if the lightsource is to the left, any surface that's highlighted would be perpendicular or nearly so to the lightsource, so you'd have, like, a cancerous tumor in the ribcage of this sprite.

Try to avoid small highlights, for the moment. Think big sweeping brushstrokes rather than little dotted highlight points. Ambivorous's edit is a pretty good example of what you might want to shoot for.