AuthorTopic: 2 Heads  (Read 2761 times)

Offline Akumu

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2 Heads

on: February 20, 2019, 06:56:37 am
Hi guys, first post here. I just wanted to share 2 works of mine (I know it says not to art dump stuff but i have seperate questions fo each).

First is Orianna's head and her animation of winking eyes, does the winking look natural and anatomicly correct?



Second is a deer head skull which is way more recent than Orianna one, and thing I had trouble with was the inside of the skull under the eye sockets, how can i show in pixels the difference in light etc. in such small area?



Overall critique is also appreciated, thanks in advance! :)

Offline strawberry

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Re: 2 Heads

Reply #1 on: February 21, 2019, 06:46:28 pm
Hello and welcome to pixelation! First I must say that both of these pixel arts have a good solid form, and that most of your troubles come from shading and coloring. For Orianna's head, the blink looks pretty alright. I don't know how a blink works for a robot; but for humans, when we blink and our eyes are closed, our eyelids are visible.

I noticed in both of these drawings, that your outlines will often times be double pixels on any turns or angles. Make sure your pixel brush setting on whatever art program you are using is at the lowest it will go for a cleaner outline.
Example coutesy of Sam Keddy.


For the deer head, First what you want to focus on is where your light source is coming from. It can be helpful to sometimes draw the light source and then later remove it. Studying reference pictures will help you too. For the below the eye sockets, it seems to be mostly composed of upper lines/ridges, with harsh shading underneath (that make's sense since the top of the ridge is at the same level of the skull, while the deepest part is sunken far to the back) Looking at the skull from a different angle will better show what I mean.

General shading on the skull helps better give the illusion that it has depth. Don't be afraid of darker colors!  ;D A common mistake newer artists have is being afraid to shade out of their comfort zone (out of corners and into the middle of the drawing); but if you look in real life, only perfect circular/square objects have shading to the side. Anything that has form will have shading in more places than the corners.
For the antlers, it can be hard in pixel art to show textures since we can only use a certain number of colors and our "brush" is per pixel (instead of a normal digital brush that automatically can give texture and hues in one stroke). An easy way to combat this is to simplify and enlarge the texture. This is commonly used for bark in pixel art trees, pixel art fur, and I don't see why antlers couldn't be the same.
Lastly, don't forget to color shift. A skull has more beige and pinkish hues than yellow.  ;)

A rough side by side comparison of what I explained below:

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: 2 Heads

Reply #2 on: February 22, 2019, 12:52:06 pm
the blinking does, in fact, look incorrect. Her eyes appear to shrink, which eyes don't tend to do when you blink.
in addition, her head is very round. it works in her designs favor but if you want anatomical correcyness that isn't working
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
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Offline Akumu

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Re: 2 Heads

Reply #3 on: February 22, 2019, 01:25:25 pm
the blinking does, in fact, look incorrect. Her eyes appear to shrink, which eyes don't tend to do when you blink.
in addition, her head is very round. it works in her designs favor but if you want anatomical correcyness that isn't working

I didn't aim for anatomy here, she is a robot + it gives to the overall looks of the picture, but thanks anyway! ^^

Offline eishiya

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Re: 2 Heads

Reply #4 on: February 22, 2019, 01:34:05 pm
Robots are even worse at changing the sizes of their features xP
Try to avoid shrinking the width of the eye and it'll look more "natural" without too much extra work. Just keep some black pixels where the eyelids meet instead of using the skin-grey.

Offline MysteryMeat

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Re: 2 Heads

Reply #5 on: February 24, 2019, 03:42:36 pm
the blinking does, in fact, look incorrect. Her eyes appear to shrink, which eyes don't tend to do when you blink.
in addition, her head is very round. it works in her designs favor but if you want anatomical correcyness that isn't working

I didn't aim for anatomy here, she is a robot + it gives to the overall looks of the picture, but thanks anyway! ^^

you did specifically ask if it was anatomically correct, haha
PSA: use imgur
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19838.0 also go suggest on my quest, cmon
MAJOR BORK TALLY: |