AuthorTopic: Critique please  (Read 4348 times)

Offline Lien

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Critique please

on: December 31, 2018, 01:01:37 pm
Hello!
That`s my first attempt to draw pixelart -                   
I want to hear your feedback about it.                       


Last edit:
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 06:56:03 am by Lien »

Offline Ackernym

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Re: Critique please

Reply #1 on: January 05, 2019, 12:31:16 am
Well, I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to be. I think it's a medusa, but I'm not entirely sure. A bit more info about the piece would be helpful.

One thing that really stands out to me are your outlines. There are quite a few jaggies, which makes the outlines looks messy and cluttered. Essentially jaggies are when you surround a pixel line with larger lines or vice versa, thus giving a "jaggy" appearance. Here's a good video on the topic: https://youtu.be/U6X2sFtugT8

A couple of the lines on the neck appear to not be well placed, and that's drawing quite a bit of my attention and it muddies the picture.

I think the strongest point in your piece is the hair. While there still quite a few jaggies, the hair is the most readable part of the piece. Overall it's a decent start and I think you should definitely keep at it!

Offline Lien

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Re: Critique please

Reply #2 on: January 05, 2019, 06:58:58 pm
Thanks for reply!
This guy isn`t medusa - his hair is wires (or something like this(sorry for my english)).
As for jaggies - i watched the video and tried to fix it, and i hope i did it.
Also i tried to add fading - what do you think about it? Maybe better without it?

Offline Ackernym

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Re: Critique please

Reply #3 on: January 08, 2019, 06:37:02 am
Wow, that looks much better! I think the anti aliasing fixes some of the issues I had with the piece before. One thing I would still change though are the lines near the bottom of the neck. I can see what you're trying to do, but personally I would just get rid of them and keep the neck as one solid color. Keep up the good work though!

Offline eishiya

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Re: Critique please

Reply #4 on: January 08, 2019, 01:59:59 pm
I think you overdid the anti-aliasing a little (and under-AAed a few bits). You don't need to AA 45-degree angles, that only serves to blur the image.

Your AA colours are also "hiding" some of the AA by making it contrast too much with one of the colours and too little with the other, undoing some of the smoothing the AA should add. Pick a colour approximately in the middle of the colours you're blending between, and do your AA in that.

Here's a quick edit with a single colour for all the AA, and some tweaks to the AA to get rid of blurring, and I got rid of the details on the neck as Ackernym suggested, as I think that's a good idea:

I'm having a hard time interpreting some of the details, so I probably changed some important features when I edited the face (especially the eyes) and hair.

Offline Lien

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Re: Critique please

Reply #5 on: January 10, 2019, 05:03:50 am
Thank you, I did it as you said

Offline eishiya

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Re: Critique please

Reply #6 on: January 10, 2019, 02:49:00 pm
You're still using some darker colours for the AA that are practically indistinguishable from your main dark blue, and you're still over-AAing some sections, you have a bunch of AA that does nothing but blur and thicken lines.

With AA, it's often very much a "less is more" approach, and when the problem is over-AAing, the easiest way to solve that is usually to start with an un-AAed version of the image, and add in AA from scratch. You typically don't need to place all that many pixels, and so it shouldn't take very long.

Offline Lien

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Re: Critique please

Reply #7 on: January 11, 2019, 11:12:40 am
Now it`s right?

Offline eishiya

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Re: Critique please

Reply #8 on: January 11, 2019, 02:07:22 pm
I think that looks a lot smoother, yes!
I'd avoid words like "right" with things like this though, it's largely a matter of [does it achieve the look you want?] rather than right or wrong.

At this point I'm nitpicking, but here I've marked in red two pixels you may want to reconsider the colours of to get some smoother curves. I leave it up to you to determine which colours they should be as an exercise.

I think these two pixels in your piece show a possible misunderstanding of AA, so I wanted to point them out to you. Since I don't know exactly what shapes you're trying to achieve, my interpretation of your lines and curves could be wrong, and these two pixels might be perfect as you have them. So, take a look, think about them, and make a decision based on what you want.

Offline Lien

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Re: Critique please

Reply #9 on: January 11, 2019, 02:32:42 pm

I changed your pixel at top, it looks better to me now.
But I noticed that I can improve it -

What do you think about it?

Also I see no reason to change another pixel.