AuthorTopic: Feature 03 - Mermaid  (Read 95027 times)

Offline Derek

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #50 on: November 08, 2006, 11:42:55 pm
I have to say this is turning out to be my favorite pixelation spontaneous collaboration thread! Here's my two cents, building upon Adarias' great edit. :) I agree the tail needs a different shading, right now it's just clashing way too much with the rest.



Just wanted to say that I think this is the best edit of the face so far.  ptoing's was good, but the lips were a bit unnatural in my opinion.

Only other thing I can add is that the horizon is kind of flat and uninteresting... it'd be nice to throw some more rocks or clouds back there.  You know, with some atmospheric haze so that it doesn't distract from what's in the foreground.  Great piece, Mirre! :y:
« Last Edit: November 23, 2006, 09:45:22 pm by ptoing »

Offline Mirre

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #51 on: November 12, 2006, 04:52:52 pm
Sorry for the long wait! Please, don't hit me!!! :ouch:

But now I've finally gotten it done ... so what do you think?




mccow28: Adjusted the hair to follow the movement of her head, but that made one of her nipples show a little so maybe I should put a nudity warning on this now? ??? I also adjusted her left breast. I put it slightly lower, as she's not sitting perfectly straight.

Keops: Thanks for the C&C! I made the black into a lighter (but still very dark) blue-grey. I'm glad you like my colour choices!

D39: The tail has been redone!

Godslayer: I've removed the black outline there, but I really liked ptoing's help with the water so that's what has been implemented.

rabidbaboy: As stated above, the tail has been redone. I studied some fish tails before I cam up with what it looks like now.

ptoing: Thank you soo much for the edit. It was a great help with this piece. Especially the reeds and the water was improved by the help you gave me. :y: I did not do it completely your way though. For example the outlines; I kept them... but made them lighter in tone on some places, and I did AA a bit better. The merging of the gold and skin colour was a great idea, so I did that as well and that left me with the possibility of adding another colour, for which I chose a very light blue so that I could make clouds and AA them nicely. I intended to have them in the piece from the start but I ran out of colours. I added highlights to suggested places, but much more on the tree than in your example, and I think that made the leaves fit more into the style of the rock and the mermaids scales. Brought the picture together so to say. I did add a face to the mermaid. But in my own style. It looked good with your edit, but it was very ptoing-ish...and compared to my style it looked like an angry make-up artist had attacked her :P Other things I did was to slim the wrist, and change the palette a tiny bit, though I did not go really as saturated as your edit is.

Actually I do not always do very clean lineart before I start adding colour. With this piece I did a ver rough lineart, but refined it on the tree and her face before adding colour. But lineart is just a part of my style I think. I do it with all my art, and I think I've just subconciously done it with my pixel art as well. I'll try out your method next time I pixel something. Thanks for the AA help as well, I've tried it out all over the piece.

Helm: I really liked the green tinge you had given to the rocks so I've used that idea, although I did not really like some parts of the highlighting on the rocks and how you made the shades purplish like... But thanks for the help and suggestions!

Tisha: Aww, thank you!

Toby: Thanks for the compliments, I've done quite a great deal of edits to this based on ptoing's!

pkmays: I kept to sort of a middle line here... made the outlines lighter, but did not remove them completely. Thanks!

Soup: Thanks! And done!

snake: Your edit was some great help on the shoulder part. I've taken parts of it into consideration like the square-ish shoulder and the arm. I think the ribcage edit made it a bit too portruding. But I have edited the tummy/ribcage area to show her pose like you suggested, and I also gave her some hipbones. The edit on the apples was very nice, but I don't think it really fits the style of the rest of the picture. Approve of the new fins?

Dusty: Follwed your suggestions about the black outlines. The fins are edited. The styles might go better together now? Although in nature things do have very differing textures. But there's more details to the leaves of the tree and the tree trunk to make it all fit together now.

Adarias: I really liked your edit of the face, still not really my style though, but I used your edit for base reference. And yeah, the light is pretty much fucked up... unless maybe, the tree is leaning out, from us.

Sohasu: It is not as much highlighting as it is her hair being toned from blonde to green... actually.

Fool: Hey, thanks!

cave: Nice edit on the tummy there, I did something along the lines of your edit.

Derek: Added lots of clouds to the background and changed the horizon a little. Better? Anyways, thanks!



Everyone was a great help to my improvement of this piece. I just hope you all think it has been improved!
« Last Edit: November 23, 2006, 09:45:37 pm by ptoing »

Offline ZoSo

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #52 on: November 12, 2006, 05:16:02 pm
I really like this peice, i love how the final resoults ended up.

Offline Feron

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #53 on: November 12, 2006, 06:24:08 pm
Awesome update - well awaited by most people on this board.  This definitely has to go into the feature chest.   :)

Offline ptoing

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #54 on: November 12, 2006, 07:42:37 pm
Yes, this might get featured indeed :D

Awesome outcome Mirre. About the mouth, I like it better in your version, it goes better together with your general style. I made the lips too dark and should als have made the eyelashes look less mascara-laden, I am not a big fan of heavy makeup to begin with. But it was a very quick edit and i wanted to get lots of things covered, and I have to say you made the best of it.

One crit I have is that the breast with the nippleslip looks smaller now than the other one. The shoulders are more or less at the same height, I think the underside of that breast should be 1 pixel down. And I would take 1 pixel away from the left side of the nipple, it looks like she has a MASSIVE areola.

Keep it up :) :y:
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Offline Godslayer

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #55 on: November 12, 2006, 09:50:53 pm
OK, nows the time for a nice, tasteful border. Perhaps an intricate gold pixel work or simple white square or even just black lines.
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Offline Helm

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #56 on: November 12, 2006, 10:40:46 pm
Congrats for nice progress. Extra points for replying to everybody in your thread, very kind. Pixelation thanks you.

:'( that the blue highlights on the rocks didn't pass through, but it's your call, I thought it was a nice idea. Same for keeping the selout, them the breaks, though my instinct when I still spot broken selout is to punch... I'll contain myself.

I think less clouds (like, 5 clouds for the whole piece, on three planes) on less of a 'grid' would be good. There's a serenity (and solemnity) of the open sky that was there and now is gone. Perhaps the best of both worlds?

The aa-ing on the upward plantation on the rocks in a bit broken I think. What you're doing is three-point max aa. zero point is no aa, one point is one buffer shade between a and b, so on. You have three points max, which is already dangerously close to blurry in almost all cases for the level of detail of such pieces (if you were drawing a closeup of an eye or something, three point would be very reasonable, even more, depending on the angle you were aaing, but this is closer to sprite-work than demoscene in how it should be aa'ed) you went and did something of a faux pas: you have a very dark thing (vegetation) against a very light thing (sky) and you have three points between them. You've chosen one moderately dark buffer, and one VERY LIGHT buffer, and a middle shade between them. This isn't good. Show you in an edit.



Still mostly three-point, but the darkest point is darker, the lightest is the same, and the middle point is used more sparringly. This I feel is a better concession between smoothness and sharp clarity, but some other aa wizard (Ptoing, Pep, Panda) might disagree with me.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2006, 09:45:58 pm by ptoing »

Offline David

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #57 on: November 13, 2006, 03:36:48 am
I don't know about the AA, but your edit doesn't look like cattails, Helm, and I think those are supposed to cattails.

Offline baccaman21

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #58 on: November 13, 2006, 03:45:03 pm
simply beautiful. C&C'd to bits!

Well done Mirre - wonderful job!
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Offline Mirre

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Re: Mermaid!

Reply #59 on: November 13, 2006, 07:18:53 pm
ZoSo, Feron & baccaman21: Thanks guys!

ptoing: Wow. Featured? Fo' real? :-[

Anyways. Glad you approved of the face! You have a point there about the breast, I'll fix it!

Godslayer: I'll see what I can do... I am working on a frame for it, but it's not really turning out the way I want it to.

Helm: Sorry! :sry: *patpat* I didn't add the blue highlights because (I thought) they were too harsh, and didn't quite fit in with the general style of highlighting. Maybe if I had had a colour closer to the lightest one of the stone...
About keeping the selout/outlines; I did not want to make everything too blurry (should have written this when I replied to ptoing's edit), because I really like when pixel art looks a bit blocky, or what to call it. You know, like big brother's work.

I'll see what I can do about the clouds. I agree with you that they changed the mood in the picture quite a bit. I think I went a bit overboard with them ::) (but they were so fun to pixel!)

About the reeds... I went with ptoing's advices/edit on them although I made it less blurry on the stems. i dunno, I'll see what I can do with the help you gave me (though you made them much smaller?).