Guts

[Derek]

Hey guys!  It's been awhile since I've been a part of this community.  Gad you guys have gotten good since last time I was here!  Forum looks great, too.

You may recognize the character from the manga Berserk.  I took a few liberties with the original design to make him look better in pixel form (to me, anyway).  Comments and critiques appreciated - very much looking to sharpen my skills.

[Helm]

Hello. Too tired to edit all over. AAing 45 degree lines only serves to make them more blurry, about left side of the jaw. Awesome likeness! You use a lot of near colors, and near-black colors too, I guess the palette can be optimized lots lots lots, I'll try later. I thought the hair highlights could be a bit brighter, maybe works? buffered the skin shades with an additional color you had there, general small edits where black can be aaed with the deep brown and whatnot. Highlighted the face a bit differently, may not work for the style you want, and I've been know to overshinify things, but on the whole I think the piece could use another layer of discreet shine.

Though the piece is wonderful, there's lots more to talk about I think. Like how his sword in the manga is scratched to hell, isn't it? and doesn't the middle part have a grainy texture to begin with? You can AA a lot more on most places, but the general form and excecution is wonderful.

Welcome back to the forums. Awesome Doom Cyberdemon avatar.

[Keops]

*fanboi mode turn on*

Oh my god it's Derek Yu!! Nice to have you back here in Pixelation. I'm such a fanboy, I love Eternal Daughter to death and I even e-mailed you once to congratulate you for such an inspiring indy game. To people like me who wants to make games for a living (and for the sake of it too, I LOVE games) it was very inspiring to see what you and your team made. I hope this intro doesn't bother you, I just couldn't help it, it's like some dude you admire just logs into a forum or site you visit, wouldn't you be happy?

*fanboi mode turn off*

As for the piece itself, it looks really nice. I agree with most of Helm comments and his edit shows some pretty good additions and modifications to the face. You can take note of those changes and apply them in the other skin areas for instance. The only other thing I see you could do to try to improve the piece is ditching black and using a very dark shade of purple or blue (very desaturated, because otherwise it'd look a bit strange) on lines and hair, the way you are using the gray inside the hair looks a bit distracting to the trained eye, not to mention kinda flat. Helm may have noticed this too, since he changed the hair to a flat shade (no border) and added the highlights. Overall, very nice piece, it's going to be a pain to animate that blade smoothly, but it'll look gorgeous!

At any rate, welcome back to pix and I hope you enjoy your stay here.

[Derek]

->

@Helm, thanks for the suggestions and the great edit!  I've incorporated a lot of your changes into the pic.  I took a closer look at the sword in the comic, and it actually tapers toward the end... darn, there go those nice straight lines!  Oh well...

Not sure if my simple "texturing" worked out along the flat side of the blade.  Lemme know.  Whatta pain that sword is/is going to be...

@Keops, thanks for the nice words!  It's always great to hear from people who enjoyed playing that game.  Also, ditched all the black lines left lying around, thanks for that!

Can't wait to animate him!  (Not. )

[Vans]

Maybe you should add some more black detail in the arm like in the armor, btw i love berserk!!! best anime&manga ever

[Rerg1]

If I were only in comics... or what ever you do. . .

Welcome to Pixelation!  , Seems like everyone knows you and well. . . Have a great stay!

[AdamAtomic]

Hey Derek - your tutorial and artwork was a big help to me when I started getting back into pixel art in a serious way, I hope I can return the favor!

->

Yours -> Mine

A lot of the changes were personal preference, but I think the big thing you could do is use your main boot color to thin out some of your harsher outlines around the image.  There is also a skin tone that is used in maybe like 10 pixels on the face, that could be used to clarify your lighting all over I think.  I also pushed the values in general, but that especially is just something of personal prefs.  The proportions are really fun, and I really like his expression!

[ptoing]

Good to see you here Derek.

Some edits, more or less helpfull.

Transparency colour is not counted towards colourcount here


General fixes:
- Removed dither on sword, ugh.
- Moved foot on right 1 pixel down.
- Added some aa here and there.

Edit:
Colour reduction to and used the grey on the sword to tint the armor a bit.

Edit 2:
Some more palette unification and much more tinting, also more aa.

C64:
Just for fun because I like the C64 palette and I think it came out well.

CGA:
Again just for fun. Works quite nice in 4 colours.

Variation:
And 4 nicer colours.

I would say as far as drawing technique and such goes you got it down pretty much, you only need to work on pixelspecific skills like colourconservation and aa.
Keep it up. 

[D39]

Not sure if my simple "texturing" worked out along the flat side of the blade.  Lemme know.

No I don't think that worked very well. The way that its dithered the two shades just combine into a new color unless I squint my eyes.

Dithering might still work though, maybe you should try a less uniform dither pattern on it. 

By Helms comment it sounds like the sword has quite alot of damage though, so if your going for complete authenticity you might have to add individual scratches and pockmarks.

[Gnarf]

Damn, I love the colors on edit 2, ptoing.  Really helpful critique there along with pretty much all the posts here.  Makes me feel bad to just comment, but I'm not much of a pixel artist to crit either way.

Anyway, is this the Derek Yu?  It's awesome knowing you visit pixelation.