[WIP] Practicing outline-style

[Lakelezz]

Thanks for the feedback, dpixel!

I agree on your opinion and was already thinking about doing a while ago.
However I wanted to fix the skirt first. Nonetheless I decided to give it a try - might help be to improve the depth.



I might have to get new colours for the outlines to emphasize on them.

Still struggling with the darkest blue shade. I lowered the tone to make it fit more into an outline role. On the other hand it does not work that well on the right sleeve.
I might have to add another colour there or tweak a little bit around. The last option would be removing the shades on the right sleeve.

In the end the dress depth is still not where it should be at - any ideas?

[dpixel]

I played with the dress for a while looking at various references and realized it wasn't fitting her right.  It's kind of snug around the hips and flares out a bit at the end.  So kept on tweeking the anatomy...shortening the torso, lengthening and thickening the upper legs, and shortening the dress. (still could go more on all of these).
As far as shading I think you might be over thinking the dress with too many colors. 
I messed with a bunch of areas such as the blue, dress straps, shoes, outlines, etc.  Hope you can get some more ideas from the edit.

[Lakelezz]

Thank you a lot for your input, dpixel 

I took your ideas into account and came up with this:



Specially your way of folding back the skirt was quite interesting! Overall I liked your changes on the skirt but I wanted to remain with a rather lighter base red on it and shaped it a little bit more.

Oh and I could finally fix the single hair on top, haha!

However the shoes are still a little bit weird, I think. I will try to look into that.

Any other suggestions or impressions?

[dpixel]

I think the shoes might be a perspective issue.  Almost like she's a bit on her toes.

[Lakelezz]

Yes, I tried to lower them bit by bit in the last updates.
However I just went for a bigger change on the.



Is this any better on a perspective way?

Additionally the colour amount has been removed from 24 to 17 (without the background grey).


Changed the shoes a little bit and went down to 15 colours.



Edit: Fixed a bad habit within the piece.


New update!

-Changed the eyes quite a lot!
-Hands got some changes.
-Multiple single pixel bad habits were fixed

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Try to keep the same rendering style on the hands as you do on the rest of the body, you're using basically a different spread of colors on the hands then the other skin. It makes them look reddish rather than the skin tone you use everywhere else.

[Lakelezz]

Thank you, Mr. Fahrenheit!

I took a look at your visual suggestion and followed your advice.
Hopefully this is right:




Tried to improve the lines again.

Here is an animated GIF for a comparison:


Additionally you can solely take a look at the new progress:

[Friend]

I don't think the new saturation changes are acting too harmoniously.  The blues are overpowering, the reds too drab. (EDIT- I see you reverted back to older colors)
  If anything I'd make the reds stronger to capture the anime style more. I reduced the colors since I find your ramps are too long in most areas like the skin and dress.  The ramps can be shortened a bit so you can control your colors better.

I also tried to focus on improving the lines.  Youre making good progress, but I find the lines can be even cleaner.  Her left arm especially.  I get youre going for the folds in the shirt, but you can imply that with the shading and make the outline cleaner.  I made a large number of subtle tweaks to cut down a little on banding and cleaning up the lines.  It is hard to see them at first, but if you zoom in and compare areas, you can see all of the little edits that smooth out the outlines and make the clusters stand out more.  Some changes that should be easier to see- bottom of the wrists, outline of the left most hair strand, her left shoulder, her calves.

  One thing I think you need to try to avoid is you try to shade edges of things with a very thin cluster.  It looks like banding.  These clusters can be thicker.  I see you already picked up on this a bit- You took out the banding in the hair strand that is the farthest left.  I'd personally make the shading around the edge of the face stronger so that it doesn't look like banding

also the black you have is a little too strong.  Try to avoid pure blacks since theyre a bit harsh

[Lakelezz]

Yes, I reverted the colours because I had the same problem as you mentioned.
Thanks for trying to balance it out! I might consider a red change but I am not sure about tweaking the black outline this red. When you were saying increasing the red's saturation to get closer to the anime style you were confusing me when you removed the black outline. Though I agree my black was probably too black ( 14 red, 14 green, 14 blue). However turning it red would not be anime anymore :/
I tried to get down to 13 colours but I could not use the purple instead of the dark red (brown one could say) because on this saturation it felt too bright.

What do you think about this new blackish (rather brownish) outline? I feel like it is too brown for an anime outline, haha.

Additionally lines have been corrected supported by neat visual considerations of the artist Jalonso

[neofotistou]

I thought I'd simplify your AA a bit, as it produced lots of banding. There's more to do, along those lines.
AA shouldn't be longer than half the width of the line you're trying to antialias.