Help with Non Metallic Shading

[Night]

Everything feels too noisy at the moment, try using more... clusters, for a lack of a better, and AA. For the smoke keep it more uniform, and perhaps even add an element of fire.
Like this:


Something I forgot to mention in my critique post - the waist, and consequently the legs, feel way too narrow in my mind, almost like they couldn't support all the weight that they bear. I suppose you could excuse it with stylistic choice, but just thought I'd throw it out there.

[Friend]

his anatomy at present is not very menacing nor apt for much physical pursuits.

Try lengthening and beefing up the legs considerably.  They need to be strong and ferocious.  Google "chimera"

[Rosier]

Played with the clusters and smoke.   Smoke naturally only comes out of the ports, which is why there isn't a large clump on the back, as it's from either shoulder.

Otherwise beefed up the waist and legs.

[Joe]

It's come quite a ways, but you've lost the metal. There has to be some reflection going on somewhere if it's going to read as bronze.
Since there won't be any animation to separate the smoke, I'd also lighten it or darken the left horn to make it stand out.
Current furnace design is a great improvement.

覧覧覧覧覧

I've been meaning to do an edit on this for some time. The pose is weak, it looks like he's sulking. And the muscles are wanting. This is a god.
Throughout the thread what's bothered me is he doesn't look like he's about to lay shit down. People sacrifice their firstborn to this guy.
I think in building off other's edits you've neglected anatomy to the detriment of the piece.
I don't know if you have separate layers, but it would work best if you built up the anatomy and the bronze first. After that's made clear you can add the smoke etc.

[Rosier]

A mix of everything cause I'm honestly getting a number of different schools of thought regarding just how much shadow to use.

Pose is at least a definite improvement.

[Rosier]

This time it's skin... Albeit I'm a bit more confident in my skin shading than my metallic.

This is intended to be Nisroch, a demon known as the Chief of Cuisine in Hell.  I sort of ran with the idea of Gluttony, so that's why it's got a sewn up mouth on it's stomach in addition to the widened one on the face.  Only other thing of real note is the shoulders have smaller arms that would cut up meat or something and that the skin resembles uncooked chicken.

[Gil]

If you're going for the uncooked chicken look, some sort of subsurface scattering might be fun? It'll allow you to keep the sickly chicken look and still get some interesting light variation in there.

[Conzeit]

heh, this is funny. I dont know if you're either channeling him somehow because you like the same stuff as he does or you have been directly influenced by SplatPixel, but it's defintively reminiscent.
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/12647.htm
He's an old user of pixelation, he always did these light skinned doll-like characters. I'm not blaming you of copying or anything like that though, this monster is clearly your own, it's far fatter than anything I remember him doing and I dont think crotch faces or shoulder stingers were something he was into either :p it's just kinda nostalgic to me to see this light skinned doll character, thought you'd dig hearing about splat's work regardless of wether you knew him or not, since it has some similar tastes.

I made a quick search for sickly chicken and by reverse image searching the sickest chicken I saw google suggested "raw whole chicken" as keyword, which yielded this among other things

one big, easy to replicate feature I see is very very pale beige skin, with almost no contents of orange (makes it look alive and healthy), and patches of purple or reddish pink discoloration. Anything more would be simply adding sagging skin, subsurface traslucency like Gil said and other sickly looking features, but that sounds far more complicated, so if I were you I'd go for the easy thing first and then judge how much more I would get from more work intensive detail

[Rosier]

If you're going for the uncooked chicken look, some sort of subsurface scattering might be fun? It'll allow you to keep the sickly chicken look and still get some interesting light variation in there.

A quick google of this makes it seem like adding light underneath the skin as if it were somewhat translucent, right?  I'll look into it.

heh, this is funny. I dont know if you're either channeling him somehow because you like the same stuff as he does or you have been directly influenced by SplatPixel, but it's defintively reminiscent.
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/12647.htm
He's an old user of pixelation, he always did these light skinned doll-like characters. I'm not blaming you of copying or anything like that though, this monster is clearly your own, it's far fatter than anything I remember him doing and I dont think crotch faces or shoulder stingers were something he was into either :p it's just kinda nostalgic to me to see this light skinned doll character, thought you'd dig hearing about splat's work regardless of wether you knew him or not, since it has some similar tastes.

I made a quick search for sickly chicken and by reverse image searching the sickest chicken I saw google suggested "raw whole chicken" as keyword, which yielded this among other things

one big, easy to replicate feature I see is very very pale beige skin, with almost no contents of orange (makes it look alive and healthy), and patches of purple or reddish pink discoloration. Anything more would be simply adding sagging skin, subsurface traslucency like Gil said and other sickly looking features, but that sounds far more complicated, so if I were you I'd go for the easy thing first and then judge how much more I would get from more work intensive detail

I've appreciated that at least once while exploring the top section of pixeljoint, but yeah, it's just similar ideas, though.  Still cool to see.

I'll try adding discoloration and maybe some more stuff.  The chicken skin was actually more of an afterthought, so I didn't check any references beforehand.

[Conzeit]

also up the contrast you're still picking colors that are hard to tell apart