Me!

[BadMoodTaylor]

Been thinking about changing my profile pic. I didn't want to post this for feedback before because it was one of my first attempts at pixel art. I was proud of it and didn't want to hear any criticism at the time (ignorance is bliss). But now I'm ready!

[Boomy]

So I'm far from being good at pixel art. I like this piece mostly because you did shading way better than I ever did on anything, so take my comment with a pinch of salt. But I tough I might be able to help out a tiny bit.

One of the two things I noticed was that the head was pointed down at a slightly weird angle. I assumed it's because the piece was supposed to be pretty dramatic but just to see how it looks I rotated the face forward and raised it a bit to add more dimension to it. I also colored the neck using colors on the face so it stands out less. It doesn't look that well since I didn't redraw it in that pose, rather just cut out and rotated, so judge the difference of that on your own.

The other thing I did was to cut out your back. There's definitely too much of it on the image, it's hard to tell where are your shoulders located because of that. Case is however, it's supposed to represent you and if you have a bad posture I guess a bit of the back could be seen from this angle. I choose to go all the way with it and just cut as much as I found reasonable to straighten it out.

I assume the art is based on a photo of yours. If you still have it and don't mind showing it, it would help out to see how exact the drawing is.

[BadMoodTaylor]

I do have the original picture but I'm not trying to get an opinion on how it relates to the original picture.  More like first impressions of it and how it looks on its own.

I can share the original picture but would like to get some more feedback first.

[Curly]

Looks like you are using low opacity black for the shadows am I right? At least the shirt looks like that to me.
Always use 100% opacity. Also read this tutorial: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
Everyone should read it

[BadMoodTaylor]

I have read that tutorial. I think I used burn/dodge tool for the shadow which is a "no no" but like I said, it was one of my first pixel art works.

[Curly]

Then I think it would be a lot more helpful if you redid it with your current knowledge and asked for critique on that new one :/
But if you wanted to know what's wrong with this one I would say it's mainly the low contrast and using non pixelart friendly tools.

[BadMoodTaylor]

Then I think it would be a lot more helpful if you redid it with your current knowledge and asked for critique on that new one :/
But if you wanted to know what's wrong with this one I would say it's mainly the low contrast and using non pixelart friendly tools.

To be clear I only used "non pixel art friendly tools" in the shadow on the shirt. I forgot about making the shadow before I drew all the lines on the shirt and got tired and lazy and cheated. But every other pixel was drawn individually with the pencil tool.

I said I'm thinking about redoing it. But that's why I posted because I am asking for specific areas of it to improve on. I think it can be better but don't know what to change. Are you saying the only thing to improve on it is the shadow on the shirt? As that was the only part done with any other tool than the pencil. And the problem is I wouldn't be able to tell how it was done. I guess it does have low contrast for a pixel art shadow.

I'm also thinking about trashing it as a profile pic and making something new. So that's another reason why I wanted to see what people thought.

[Curly]

There are some colors that are used only for a couple of pixels, the shading is a bit weird, jaggy lines and pixels that look like placed randomly (nothing unusual for your first time).
Try avoiding those things, look at other people's work, read tutorials and keep making pixel art Every piece you make is usually better than the previous one.

[BadMoodTaylor]

Started to take a closer look and was going to do a quick edit now and a bit at a time and started to realize there is more wrong than I thought.



Trying to figure out if it is worth the time to try and fix everything or spend time making something else