I have no idea how to make a face

[victornecromancer]

The title says all I don't know if it's a problem in the head and in its ratio / angle or lack of competence of myself, so I really need your help. Any advice, hint or criticism regarding this or any other thing related to the pixel art are welcome.



And for those who wonder why I did this strange pose, it is based on this fanart of Giorno Giovanna: https://www.reddit.com/r/StardustCrusaders/comments/4yu24x/giorno_and_his_gold_experience/

[Kellawgs]

I think I can squeeze a face in there but like you said you may want to work on the shape of the head a little.

[victornecromancer]

Maybe this head fits better? (Without face looks like he is facing toward front)

Also, i fixed some things in the pose

Edit: another edit i made:

[pistachio]

Old head is better IMO, until I looked at the ref, then I notice you missed the head tilt on both of these.

Enter the cube...


(I am way off by many degrees so look at the ref!)

Shoving pixels around for some minutes and I got this


(Ditto, look again at the ref!)

This the trickiest part about pixel art IMO. (And representational art in general, but that's another road.) Where the symbolic and graphic parts of your brain are wrestling each other. Factor in the third player, the pixel, because the coarser the grid gets the more significant each one is and it gets even tougher. See Ramblethread if you can read the walls of text.

Eventually you have to go thru the "scaling" process in your head, so you know what to sacrifice on real tiny stuff. And if you are successful, knowingly or unknowingly you WILL have sacrificed shitloads each time. Such is art.

[EduardoPras]

Hello Victor!

I'll try to help you a bit.

There are some really good things going on here.

-You are using big clusters of pixels.
-You have a solid lightsource.
-Your colors are choices are working and you hue shifted every color.
-You've made some careful pixelwork. (Nice job!)

But there are some things that I would try in a different manner.

-You anatomy seems to be a bit off(Short Legs and really thick arms/torso)
-This pose is not great. For an american plane it is nice but in a full body shot the legs are uninteresting.
-The head has some confusing pixel angles. I tried to suggest a more 3D position.

I've also made some changes.
-Moved the legs a bit but tried to keep the pose.
-Made the person more slender.(Making the person more feminine was an accident, sorry about that.)
-Made and example of how I would make a face.

It seems you got a bit lost when you had no reference to follow. That usually happen and you will have to study a bit of anatomy to get over this.
I also recommend you study action lines. Gesture drawing helps a lot in this aspect.

Here's how I would approach those issues:



Anyway, hope it helps!

[victornecromancer]

Your tips really gave me a clear view of where I was wrong: D

I decided to take another initiative and focus just above the torso, so that the pose becomes "interesting"

I have to apologize because I have not made any progress, after all I'm traveling at the moment, but I believe that this post will help anyone with the same doubt I had.