AuthorTopic: GR#209 - Larks Sprites - Form, Shading  (Read 32902 times)

Offline 9_6

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #20 on: July 25, 2014, 05:20:07 pm
That's an improvement.
To improve it even more, the head could really use the fixes I talked about earlier.



You really need to stop putting the eyes so low.
Look at your reference.
It's nowhere near the center of the head. It's nowhere near this large. Neither are the ears.
You should probably also stop omitting the mouth.



Horses are super shiny and have a million muscles and veins everywhere.
To achieve that, you need to put dark and bright clusters next to each other.
It is sometimes counterintuitive where to put the bright spots.
That is because horses are a nightmare to draw.
The highlights just go wherever they please so study the reference closely.
Enjoy.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2014, 05:26:17 pm by 9_6 »
Does scaling an image blur it?
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Offline LarkoftheRiver

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #21 on: July 25, 2014, 08:38:55 pm
Like this, maybe? I fixed the head and ear shape, and added more contrast in my pallet. I tried to do the shine like you said, but I'm having a lot of trouble with it, specifically on the head.

Offline 9_6

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #22 on: July 26, 2014, 02:55:45 pm
Well that's a huge improvement. Well done!

The eyes could be a bit higher yet and the nostrils could be even bigger and more to the front of the snout.

One thing you should avoid are single pixels like on the tail edge and in the highlights.
Those tend to do the opposite of helping with readability and add noise.
You can make sure there are none by sketching with a 2x2 brush, then touching it up with a 1x1 one.
That also makes the sketch way more malleable so you can iron out kinks fast without obsessing over details just yet.

On another note, I also edited your umbreon.



Yours does not quite look like this:

And I guess you wanted to give it a black panther fur shading.

« Last Edit: July 26, 2014, 04:02:44 pm by 9_6 »
Does scaling an image blur it?
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Offline LarkoftheRiver

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #23 on: July 27, 2014, 04:34:26 pm
Thank you for the edit on umbreon! I'll get started on more changes to it.

More horse edits.

Offline LeshrotArt

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #24 on: July 27, 2014, 05:58:53 pm
The lighter color is in high contrast with the other colors, try to smooth it.

Offline LarkoftheRiver

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #25 on: August 09, 2014, 05:49:33 pm
Wow, I haven't posted in a while. Haha, sorry about that. Band, mostly. It started about two weeks ago and I have been to exhausted to do anything but sleep. (and practice.. the all-state music this year is scary!)

Quick horse edits.

I dulled the harsh highlight. Better?

Offline astraldata

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #26 on: August 10, 2014, 08:47:08 pm
It's much better, but some of your highlights don't make sense. A good example is the line coming off of the underarm of the horse's left 'arm' as it seems to cut through the shadows for no apparent reason.

Also, there are no highlights on the face, where the light appears to be coming from (according to the diagram beside it) and the legs also have no highlights. If the highlights are from sunlight reflected from the environment, they'd be many more places on the horse, even in tiny amounts. The hooves are flat too because there's no sense of light and shadow, and thus no form. You can use a single highlight for that, but you need something if you want to indicate 3d form.

Unrelated to your horse, but since you appear to like to draw 'cute' animals, I thought I might give you some tips:

I know I haven't mentioned it since my last edit, but your 'dog' above, just after my edit, still looks way too much like a fox. The eyes and size of the head are still waaay too huge for the style of dog you said you were going for (judging by the reference you posted). You really ought to do some work in regards to taking care of the size and placement of the eyes, as well as the size/shape of the head. These are very vital areas and really make your stuff either look correctly-drawn or grossly-distorted.

The size of the head relative to the overall body size, believe it or not, really characterizes a creature, human or otherwise, so it's important to nail this first and foremost. It determines its age and also gives a sense of whether it's realistic or stylized/childlike. Size of the eyes are actually third to that because the placement of the eye is more important to determining what, and how "cute', they are than the size of the eye.



Not sure if you are familiar with Naruto, but the character Konohamaru has very small eyes, but his face works like a simple smiley-face with two dots for the eyes and a U shaped mouth, where the placement of the eyes in the center of a big moon-shaped face gives the illusion of 'cute' probably way more than that same smiley having instead large anime/chibi/etc. eyes on that same moon-shaped face. This principle is applicable to animals too, and you'd use it the same way for the most part. Unless done right, large eyes tend to make things look 'alien'. It's much easier to achieve 'cute' with more button-like eyes imo. The dog edit of mine shows this principle in action pretty well if you remove a pixel or two around the eye and make it more 'dot-like' for example.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 09:02:15 pm by astraldata »
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Offline LarkoftheRiver

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #27 on: August 12, 2014, 10:46:34 pm
Thank you! The eye thing was something that I got into when I started pixeling (by mostly accident) and I'll try to do better with it in the future.

A commission I received the other day, would like some feedback before I post it for the commissioner. It is a silver tiger, and my first time doing stripes. I'm very proud of the stripes but something just seems odd about the shading.


Also horse.

I tried to add more highlights to the face but I'm still not very satisfied with them, and added more leg highlights too. Tried to add more form to the hooves as well.

Offline astraldata

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #28 on: August 12, 2014, 11:49:31 pm
Looking a ton better form-wise on the horse -- you've made quite a bit of progress dude.

As far as the cat above, the light-source is difficult to tell direction-wise -- why don't you keep in mind that you should shade something this organic with the basic 3d shapes in mind. You could equate the body as a long 3d rectangular 'cube' and that will help you know which parts of the body need the most light as long as you pick a solid light source.

Shading organics while keeping in mind their basic 3d shapes -- and the faceting of the larger details (which requires you to have an idea of what the thing would look like if it were "low-poly" essentially) -- will help you figure out what's wrong with the image.

The main thing I see here is that the back of your cat doesn't have enough light compared to the right if the left side of the body is where the light source originates. Also, you don't have enough contrast in your darkest shades to outline the foreground legs and stomach (if that's what that light color on the right side of the body is) because your shades are too close together contrast-wise.
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Offline LeshrotArt

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Re: Lark Tries out form

Reply #29 on: August 13, 2014, 12:40:36 am
Perhaps it give you some idea, a single edit.