[C+C] Anime Portait

[Durrahan]

I killed some spare time by drawing this picture. I've no idea what I want to display in the background, any suggestions? Also feel free to critic it.

[EduardoPras]

Hello Durrahan!

First let me tell you, your pixelart is really good.

You've chosen great colors and your AA is great, i usually don't like AA and seldom use it but I'll probably try using your style in the future.
You hue shifted colors and that mouth you drew is great, do you have any online place where I can find more of your art?

Now for the things I think you could work on:
Most problems i found were due to lack of symmetry and some anatomy mistakes, they are more slip ups than mistakes.
Try to imagine your forms like a 3D figure to measure the height of the facial features.
You also had a pretty strong tangent in the chin(it was connecting the chin to your hairline) this kind of thing makes you lose a lt of depth.

Here are my notes on your original:


And here's how i would change it:



Hope this helps you a bit.

[Durrahan]

Thanks, EduardoPras for the suggestions!

I changed the eye highlights to reflect only one light source coming from below and straighten it accordingly. I also moved the hairline a bit up on the right side and lowered it on the left side. I too thought there was something off with the eye symmetry, but I wanted to keep the feel of depth to it. Therefore, I only changed the curvature of the right eye and moved it down a notch. With the new eye placement, the nose seemed to look a bit queer and I changed the angle a bit.


(Photoshop changed the colors a bit during gif conversion)

Funny thing is, your suggestions almost looks like a draft I made for it:


I used this as a general reference, if you would like to know:
Spoiler

do you have any online place where I can find more of your art?

Unfortunatly no. I thought about a web presence but decided against it, because I don't draw that often to make it worth the effort.

[EduardoPras]

No problem Durrahan, I am glad that I could help.

I look forward to see more of your art around here, you have a great grasp on the fundamentals.

It was nice to see your process, from ref to sketch. That's interesting, my suggestion was really pretty similar to your original draft. Haha!

Do work with art or it is a hobby?

Also, let me know if you decide to make a gallery somewhere.

[Durrahan]

It's just a hobby. I work as a software developer and have sadly nothing to do with pixel art there.

Sure thing, but don't get your hopes up

[aura kendama]

really nice from Durrahan

liked that the face becomes more rounded from the contours

[Durrahan]

Thank you, aura kendama.

I aim is now to make a decent background, which isn't too distracting. My initial draft is a bookcase and looks something like this:



I'm not really satisfied with the perspective and the lighting, any suggestions?
[Edit] I settled with a flat background.

[Ship Shipley]

I killed some spare time by drawing this picture. I've no idea what I want to display in the background, any suggestions? Also feel free to critic it.

I don't know why other people are trying to re-proportion this drawing.  It looks great the way it is.  Their changes are irrelevant and possibly hampering your style.

Since this is a close-up, I think the background doesn't really matter.  In other words: it's done, ship it.

But based on the options you're considering, I think the important thing is whether you want the shape of the hair to contrast with the background versus get lost in it.  To me, the subtle difference with the green background is that you lose the hard edges around the hair which makes the hair seem to mesh with the frame of the image, which might be cool.  Your choice.

[Hunited]

Ship Shipley, you do realise that only one person suggested changing the anatomy a bit and the following post was OP editing his own work to incorporate the comments, right? So he did 'reproportion' it, like you called it.

[Ship Shipley]

Yes, I realized I'm too late.  But my mission here is to convince other perfectionists that their work is GOOD ENOUGH and doesn't need all the painfully subjective revisions that people always suggest on this site.  I'm tired of seeing interesting styles converted into a boring, uniform style as if there can be only one.  There is way too much mimicry going on in pixel art already.  People need to be told to define their own expectations, not adhere to somebody else's.  So when I have time to catch up and post once in a while, this is generally what I'm going to do.