Tips on Pixeling Liquid for Drinks?

[Yokai90]

Hey again everyone, I recently did some pixel art to sell as stickers and overall I'm pretty satisfied with what I made. However, I can say that pixeling liquid or specifically coffee for my piece was difficult and I definitely think I can improve upon it.

Here is the original, the final is unfortunately sized up as I have to do so for sticker making. Its an E-Tank from Megaman with coffee in it.



Unfortunately, I could not find any tutorials on specifically on how to pixelate drinks and instead followed a tutorial on water and references on the coffee itself.

Can anyone give me any tips on how to do pixel art on drinks? or is there any tutorials on pixelating drinks themselves?

Thanks so much guys.

[pistachio]

Drinks are basically liquid = reflective material. May be refractive or not, I will just cover reflections...



Especially at low rez, keep it simple. If this means faking the reflections or stripping it down to one shape like I do here (for the steam), do that.
You can also use a recognizable symbol, something along those lines. You have some coffee spilling out of the tank, hopefully you see that as a feature of liquid and there's recognition.
This also applied to the tank = more reflection.
Also changed the shape to keep it looking less like it's falling over, made the E easier to read.

[Yokai90]

Apologies for the super late response but thank you so much for the insight and adding on to my piece I really appreciate the advice given Pistachio. 

Heres an update on the advice that you gave me. I changed the reflection as suggested but kept the outline the same. Based on light source additionally, I made the reflection of the coffee match that. Changed the E as suggested and also made droplets of coffee based off the edit you made, however, I tried to exaggerate it to give it more energy (Pun intended).

[daramon]

I love the steam effect you got there, and the palette is lovely and warm. Almost cozy.

What did you use as the source material for the E-Tank? It seems to be missing the distinctive upper and lower lips, and the bands you've added are unevenly spaced, giving you less room to develop that iconic 'E'.

https://tinyurl.com/yxva4k8g

I like how Pistachio handled the "falling over" issue, but another way to get a dynamic effect could be by using exaggerated perspective and foreshortening.


Here's a *really* rough edit (sorry, I only had a lunch break and I'm just starting out myself) with shiny black coffee, those lips and a bigger, more centered E. I'd like much more time to refine the top and improve the tilt a bit, but I hope you get the idea. My style is a bit more diagrammatic and less cartoony in general, so this was hard work.

I also love Pistachio's shine and drips! And your rework is looking fiiiiine!

[Chris2balls]

Your second version is a huge improvement on the first!

To expand on what pistachio and daramon have already said and shown:



Contrast is very important. It's what helps you make out the mug from the background, and the coffee from the mug.
I've made the coffee a lot darker, and you may notice that I highlighted it facing the mug's highlight. Opposite the coffee's highlight I've added a brown stroke, to suggest the colour of the liquid.

The highlight's there because that's the "edge" the light hits first on the surface, while the brown stroke's more of a diffuse passage of light leading up to the highlight.

Hope this helps! 

[Yokai90]

@ Chris2balls

Thank you so much for the advice regarding the coffee

I took that advice as well as your reference and edited my sprite to include what you stated. Again, to everyone in this thread thank you so much for the advice so far! it is very informative and I appreciate the help thus far.



@daramon I see what you mean! however, as of now, I want to keep the design as is. I hope you take no offense to that and again, I appreciate the critique!

Truthfully, I really like the design I have right now. I suppose if it helps for context I was trying to get the cup to tilt just a little at a sort of 3/4 angle to show some form of energy as it is a cup of coffee in an E-Tank. That is what I was essentially trying to portray.

[MysteryMeat]

Did my own edit of the most recent version. The way your can is tilted has me thinking it's being moved like someone's tilting and swishing it about, and most of the time liquids being swirled in a can like this will sorta slosh up and back into itself along the curve of the container. You can KINDA see what I mean here, hard to find a picture of it but you're probably familiar with the idea if you've ever swished a liquid around in a wine glass:

Spoiler

I tried to add something like that to give it more of a sense of motion, as well as some tweaks to the can edge to add some dripping and connect the brown(?) area as the inside of the can more!

[Yokai90]

@MysteryMeat.

I don't have much to add but oh man your take on this sprite is looking excellent!

[daramon]

Also don't worry, no offense taken!