Much more 3D looking with the highlight and the consistent shading. -- Remember, light doesn't move around that often in real life, and with pixels, all you're doing is simulating where the light falls and how it reflects or diffuses. The key term there is "reflects" because that's what you're simulating with pixels. It will either reflect fully or break apart across the surface (scattering like lots of tiny ball-bearings).
The only difference with pixels vs. real life or a 3D program is that you have an additional job as an artist:
Make it *read* well.So keep in mind that there are planes on the body of your subjects -- they are 3D forms -- and the light hits some of these areas more directly than others. In the places where the light doesn't hit directly, unlike in a 3D program or reality, you can play with the highlights and shadows to give it the kind of "read" you want it to have so that it comes across better to others.
In your turret animation, there is a LOT of detail around the mouth (too much for that fast of an animation), and because the turret crosses that area, there's way too much happening there as it passes. You'd be better off putting ALL of that area of the face in light or shadow just below the beak and ignore any details there.
You need to think
ahead at the
entire animation when you're animating something complex like this -- especially at this resolution -- because when forms overlap, you can have lots of confusing stuff going on that the eye can't read when there are too many details happening in the same place.
The only other thing I could mention about the animation is the pupils appear to translate into the top of the beak, passing them (the pixels) on to the other eye (remember the part where I said to think ahead?) so that the pupil doesn't read as a pupil but instead as a shifting blob of dark moving across the entire face. You could lighten the top of the beak's outline a lot (use the same color as the eyebrows on the top of the beak) and this would fix it. The problem is that the pixels are TOO close to the same luminosity (no matter if their HUE is different, the luminosity trumps hue everytime in terms of readability.)
Lastly, remember to vary your color choices -- the highlights across the metal surface should be tinted with the same color as the light in the scene. Most people use yellow tints, but you can vary it up with red or purple or really anything -- but the key is to NEVER use solid grays unless you need them to stand in and absorb the colors from nearby hues (essentially acting as a stand-in shade when you need it to be that level of luminosity for multiple color hues -- great trick btw!)
I really like the fat chick animation, but it looks like it's hopping and waddling more than flying. You can actually fix this by simply making the wing sharper at the point in the animation where it's midway and entirely down, making the upward curve toward the tip of the wing at the point where the wing lifts fully actually oppose itself when it goes down.
The fat effect comes from the belly being pushed forward when its body lands, but in fact, that's precisely where the wing should push forward and come to a point opposing the downward momentum (the eye reads the belly as it expects to read the wing, and therefore it comes off as acceptable even though the brain knows there's something wrong... weird how this stuff works, isn't it? lol)
That's all I've got for now. Nice improvements though man! Keep it up!
