Hey Boraka, welcome to Pixelation
This is a great start. Here is an edit to the face, I want to show you a different way of thinking. I got a little too into it 'cause I liked your character so much.
You can make huge progress if you internalize a simple mindset: Pixels as a medium are very much like oil painting, or neo-impressionism—with a few technical considerations.
Why? Because at this resolution details like fine lines can't been seen in the same way. So for example the hair strands you placed aren't working as well as you intended.
Coming from another medium like drawing, which is line-heavy, it's intuitive to use outlines to delineate the different parts. Everyone does it. But is it working for you or against you? In most cases, it detracts from your piece.
A second point about outlines. You may have heard about
banding. Well, any time you have a single pixel-width outline separating two colors, like the bottom edge of her hair, you create
banding.
In time you
will develop a keen eye for it, but for now your basic anti-banding strategy is this: any time you see the edges of two tiles line up, figure out how to shift one of them! It takes a lot of practice, especially in small areas like the eyes, to figure out just the right combination, but work at it and you will get better.
Why does banding matter? Because it artificially lowers the resolution of your work. Just by shaving the outline between her cheek and hair, I converted the banding to anti-aliasing. AA is simply a buffer, or transitional color between two larger shapes—or clusters, as Helm calls them.
Basic principles:
- Convert lines and shading to tones/patches of color. See nose for example
- Use details sparingly. You don't have much room to express your ideas, so it's better to choose what you want to emphasize
- Use pure black carefully. On computer screens it's a very powerful color, and especially should not be used for outlines.
- As a baseline, ask, 'would it be this color in real life?' For example the ink on her arm would be brighter, even if it were 'pure' black. Of course any style considerations will change this baseline.
Try to rework it based on some of these ideas. I probably forgot something, if you want to know why I did something specifically just ask.
