Christmas Card [Finished?] (updated 12/21/06)

[Checkworth]

Updated and possibly finished, but c&c still effusively appreciated (see reply #4 for the deepest desires of my heart)
Ok, one thing that really bugs me is that the kid is supposed to be looking at the snowman, but now it looks like he is staring out of the picture, and is faceless like a Nazgul, but looking at the viewer.

Does anyone else see this as a problem, or have I just been looking at it too long? I can't figure out how to fix it =(

Merry Christmas!



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Yuk:


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P.S. The snowman is wearing my favorite hat in the whole world, if you were wondering about that.

[Cure]

A definite "no" on the dithered, but also on the non-dithered.  I would try dithering, but the main problem I see in your dithering is that you don't use dithering to ease the transition between two colors, because you don't use pure colors; it's over-dithered.  The "more colors" version uses too many more colors, imo.  I would dither, but to a much smaller degree.

[Senad]

Dithering is wierd.. I can see all the dots.. even count them 

try brighter color for those dots that got huge space between eachother.. choose one colors that u can use in the other parts of the pixel too '

the first one is best atm.. but u could still dither a bit.. just a bit to avoid the straight lines between 2 colors.. too get it lt smoother look.. dunno

[AIGuy]

This is how I dither.  Try it if you think it looks better.
I also think you should darken the lightest color, but that's just me and I don't know anything.

[Checkworth]

Thanks for your replies, everyone! AIGuy, your dithering example is really helpful...I didn't end up dithering after all  but I will probably try it in my next piece. My current ugly dithering is way too rectangular to be used on a sphere, so I must improve.

I stayed with the non-dithered partly out of laziness but also because I find the straight lines beautiful (still I find the crits very valid and will see what I can do next time)

It's probably finished now just because it's almost Christmas, but I would still do backflips for comments  Specifically, if someone gave you a Christmas card and this was on the front (2x) would you be like "ew"? Or would your reaction at least be neutral? (Positive is too much to hope for).

Thanks! 

[MoD]

I think your text would do well with some aa, as would the shovel handle. Aside from that, not really any problems I see. If someone gave me a Christmas card with that on it, I'd probably feel as least a bit warm and fuzzy inside that someone would make a piece of art just to give it to me on a Christmas card.