Portraits (Erde)

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I have slowly continued making portraits for my project Erde, the style was developed here:http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=16107.0
Thanks to all who posted there esp. Cyangmou, Facet and Vagrant for their help in developing a fresh style for the portraits. I have continued working in what I think has become a pretty specific style.
I'm trying a new approach with the latest WIP; working directly from a pencil drawing rather than my usual loosely based from various sketches approach. I feel like her personality suffers in the pixel version though! I see a few differences in the facial structure but it's quite a different medium from the flat pencils to the paint-like pixels, so I am challenged.
original pencil drawing:                                                 transition:                                                                       
                       
&  amongst the others so far created:   
 
Help me get this last portrait lookin' good.

[Poggles]

These all look amazing, and the style is rather unique itself. I think the thing I notice right away in her facial differences is that in the sketch her eyes seem more heavily lidded. I don't think the pixel portrait looks bad at all, but I prefer the heavier-lidded look in the sktech. Just my two cents

[pavanz]

If you are trying to recreate the pencil drawing with fidelity, you may consider changing her face angle a bit. Her face in the pixels also looks a little longer than the original. Nice details on the shoulder pad, btw.

[Friend]

The feet are bothering me. When I hide them with my hand everything looks good.  May need to look into that

[Silenia]

The differences are not just facial features itself, but also the pose.

In the original pencil sketch, she's basically looking straight-forward to slightly downwards while her head's at an upward angle. More specifically, her chin is jutted up but her head is horizontally kept straight, which gives the whole "haughty" feeling: she is more-or-less literally looking down her nose on whatever she's watching.

In your pixel art, on the other hand, her head isn't upwards. It's cocked to the side. Just follow the line from one eye to another (or from one cheek to the other, etc.). That line's (nearly) horizontal in the sketch, but in the pixel art it's at what I'd estimate to be about a twenty-degree angle.

Her eyes, which in the sketch were looking slightly-down forwards are now looking sideways-up. Not because of the angle, but on top of it.

Furthermore, her chin and nose are more or less level with the viewer in the pixel art. In the pencil sketch, you can see some of the underside of the chin and nose.

You've also lost some of the sharpness/pointiness in the facial details from the sketch. Those aren't quite as important on their own, imho, but they somewhat helped amplify the sketch's haughty feeling.

For the most part, it's just a case of having smoother, less sharp curves and angles in the pixel art at various places, which is amplified by a fairly smooth, "round" shading. There are some more specific points that changed beyond that, however.
The shape of her eyes. In the sketch they're somewhat pointy towards the nose, whereas they seem to, if anything, get wider towards the nose in the pixel art. (they're also more lidded in the original sketch, as compared to the wide-open look from the pixel art, but I think that's mostly the pose-matter I described above)
The angle of her eyebrows. In the sketch, the eyebrows have a fairly sharp angle in them. This gives off the appearance of a slight frown or sneer. They're far smoother in the pixel art, following more of a gradual curve.

[Zia]

You're sort of suffering from "escher girl syndrome." Her waist and back are... bizarre. People don't actually stand like that, nor do they bend that way. I just tried emulating her pose, getting my lower back to bend that way with my chest thrown forwards, and it was terribly, terribly uncomfortable. It always throws me off when I see it in art like this. Try posing like that yourself and you'll see what I mean. I recommend working on your anatomy a bit.

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Silenia:   That is very precise feedback; it really helped. I'm impressed you conveyed such a detailed critique without even using one image. Thank you for taking time to do that. I tried to retain the haughtiness in this one and actually followed the pencil sketch's angles. Well, the shoulder pad still strays a bit.

Zia & Friend: I should have mentioned that I didn't plan on making a full body portrait or character profile.. but what are you saying? SHOULD I? hmm... I would definitely need to adjust the anatomy as I go. (I'll post a pixel sketch of an updated body to go with the pixel portrait soon and we can work on fixing that up).
 I don't need a full body portrait for the project but it would be a great thing to make just for the experience. I've wanted to since a couple people coming to mind have made such appealing full body portraits.

Pavanz: Yes a redo actually following the angles of the face would be a better way. Thanks about the shoulder pad.

Poggles: Glad you like the style so far. I kept the lidded eye tip in mind with the new one.

Here's the completely redone face:

[Silenia]

I'm glad my feedback was helpful. As to giving the critique without using images: that's simply because you gave enough images I could make the comparison between the sketch and the pixel art; the sketch pretty much already illustrated my points in most cases.

Much improved as far as her expression goes. Her eyes still give off a slight impression of looking upwards, however. That's because all the sclera (white of the eye) shown/hinted at is near the bottom of the eye, whereas the pupil+iris not only is located slightly above halfway the eye, but it merges with the dark from her lashes there. If you want to give off the appearance of her looking slightly down, this should be the other way around; the part of her pupil/iris that's obfuscated by her lashes should appear to be at the bottom of the eye, while the sclera shown should be at the top.

I also don't know if it's intentional or not, but the upper highlight on her lips reads as "tooth" more than as lip, at least to me. That's probably because it's enveloped by the two darkest shades on the lips. It doesn't look bad, mind--gives off the appearance of a snarl, especially because the curve&shading of her lips also seems to suggest one side's slightly more raised than the other--but I'm not certain if it's intentional because it wasn't in the sketch or the previous version.
(If not, it's a pretty easy fix. Just replace it with either of the two middle shades on the lips--cf8f9e or e19faa.)

The hairpin should probably cast a bit (more) of a shadow on the hair.

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Thanks again
   (of joyousness).
I have to get ready to head out for the day but I will certainly try another edit on the eyes as soon as I can. I will also try an edit on the mouth but i kinda like it; I will at least play with alternatives there.

I did however make the mouth showing tooth intentionally cause in the larger version of the drawing it's more apparent that her mouth is slightly ajar. It was really hard NOT to over do the snarl though any slight change quickly  seemed to turn her into a very angry looking woman.

here's a bigger version of the pencil cropped:


And for now here's a quick edit of the pose next to the original:

needs work but is that more convincing of a stance?

[Silenia]

You're welcome. =)

Like I said, the mouth isn't bad, but I wasn't sure if it was intentional, so I figured I'd better say something anyway. =) Yes, you're right, the mouth is slightly ajar in the original sketch. The current pixel art doesn't read so much like slightly ajar as raised lip and snarling, but then, that seems to fit her personality, no? From what I can tell, she's not a happy-go-lucky lady, so...

As to the pose, it looks somewhat more natural, yes. The main issue remains albeit to a lesser degree. Her body twists in ways that might be possible but most certainly are not comfortable. Parts of her body suggest a perfect side-view, some suggest her body is turned slightly towards the viewer and others suggest she's turned slightly away from the viewer. The two areas dealing with the worst contortion are the transition from legs to torso and the upper torso/arms/neck area.
(Something about her feet also feels "off" to me, but it might be that's simply because the other issues are making it difficult to get a read on how she's supposed to be standing. Though I'm fairly sure her knee is not where her kneepad is unless she has her foot pretty far twisted inward at the ankle.)

For that matter, her arm-with-shoulder-pad is really off. With the way you've portrayed her neck, her shoulder should be a fair bit more to the (viewer's) right. Which also means you should show slightly more of the front-side of her shoulder/upper arm, and a fair bit less of the back-side.
The location it's in now is, I think, a left-over from the remarkable contortion of the original sketch, which showed off half of her upper back and half of her lower belly at the same time. (It's not quite that bad any more.  )

The shoulder-pad's angle also clashes with her arm's angle--it's not possible to bend your arm there, so as a result, it eh...sorry to be harsh, but it looks either like the arm's broken or like the pad is a cardboard-cut pasted on with some glue. 

There's some other anatomical issues as well, mostly dealing with the muscles on her legs and arms, but I'm not going to point those out for now, since the way to fix those depends on the way the pose itself is fixed, and pointing out issues that can't be solved yet doesn't seem particularly helpful to me.