[WIP] Mushroom

[Obsidantion]

Hello Pixelation, I am new to pixeling and wish to improve so that I can produce my own graphics for games. I have created a pixel of a mushroom and any comments or criticism (regarding anything from touching up the lineart to colours etc.) will be greatly appreciated by me. Thanks.

Edits So Far:

[Krut]

Hey man:

First of all, i think you could add a more interesting dither pattern to the mushroom, as right now it seems too simple.

Second of all, the casting of shadows needs to be more pronounced; right now those whitey things are popping quite a lot (according to the way you shaded and highlighted them), so, they need a bigger casting of shadow upon the mushroom itself otherwise make them a bit more "inner"; this can be done by removing the highlight on top and decreasing the shadow below, or either increasing the shadow below.

I like the colour pallette, but you could make things more interesting, integrating a few of these colours in other parts; for instance, that deep blue could be used instead of that blood red on the bottom of the head of the mushroom.

Like i said the casting of shadows is off, and the mushroom isnt really well colored according to the lightsource; there could be a counter reflection (forgetting the name here, sorry) common in round/ball figures, on the bottom of the head, and the actual part that holds the head should be much darker, and there you could include some nifty light effects.

The way the grass is shaded doesnt respond to the lightsource of the mushroom either, i imagine that since the lightsource is casted directly over the top of the mushroom, it blocks the direct light on the grass (wich here doesnt appear to be the case)

The shape itself i like, but maybe the curves could be done on a more stylized way, i could probably edit if you want, since its hard to explain.

I would also reccommend converting this into a complete mini-scene, as i definetely see potential in it.

Keep at it, and just give a shout if you need an edit.

Hope to see some progress in this.

-Krut.

[Obsidantion]

Thanks a lot Krut! Much help there. I would definitely like to turn it into a mini-scene, would be good experience. As to your critiques, I have given another edit a shot taking into account your comments on dithering and some of your shading ideas. I would much appreciate an edit from you illustrating your points on the more advanced aspects of shading and light (i.e. the mushroom's cast over the grass) and how I might go about stylizing the lineart as you said. Thank you very much.

Edit:

[Xion]

I think the dithering would be much smoother if you added a sort of half-tone thing. Look closely at where one dither turns to another...you see that? Yeah, you can still see the line that separates the colors. I mean, it just makes it look sorta striped.

[AdamAtomic]

I wouldn't fret over the actual technical bits of the dithering overmuch right now, you still have some pretty fundamental lighting problems.  While you've not pillowshaded it, you've done the next worst thing, which is to just paint swaths of darkening colors from top to bottom, irregardless of any reasonable lightsource or the shape and contours of the mushroom itself.  The way you've shaded it, it looks like your mushroom is a thin section of a donut, rather than a cone shape.  Find some references online or IRL (like an upside-down plastic or paper cup under a lamp) and see where the light actually hits the surface.  You don't need to do photo-realistic lighting in order to do a good pixel of a mushroom, but it might be a good place to start if you're looking for tips on how to sell the shape of your subject better.

EDIT

Ok I was fidgety and hadn't pixeled anything fun yet today so I thought I'd do a seriously, hella sloppy little helper image here to show you what I mean about painting gradients without thinking about form.  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, please, no one take my specific example to closely to heart.  Let it merely serve as a rushed and crappy illustration of an important principle for beginners.  I did a similar image for mountains and landscapes before that seemed helpful, so I thought I'd do one for your mushroom (or really mushrooms everywhere) too:



These two images have pixel-perfect, identical silhouettes.  The one on the left is shaded with broad swaths of color, brightest to darkest, irregardless of the form of the subject.  The one on the right is haphazardly but well-intentionedly (yeah that's not a word) shaded with some little amount of thought and consideration given to the form of the object I am trying to illustrate.

While I was doodling this I came across another point that is probably not to early to start thinking about.  That is, the side effects of dithering.  Unless your shades are very very very close together (and even then this can still happen) dithering almost necessarily results in TEXTURE.  Meaning, as you blend your lighter and darker colors together, any place they are adjacent, your eyes will perceive some small geometrical protrusions, also called bumps and shit.  This is because bumps on things catch and cast shadows and light, and that is what painting is; telling people where light is falling on an object.  So as you experiment with blending your colors, remember to cast a critical eye on the results of your dithering; does this add any unwanted texture to my subject?

[Obsidantion]

I'm really happy with the help I've recieved so far. In this edit I've concentrated on the comments from AdamAtomic of shading and changing the direction of the light source to bring out the shape and I've added shades to smoothen the contrast as suggested by Xion. Thank you both for your help.

Edit:


If anyone has some suggestions regarding the grass I would appreciate those as I haven't had much luck in my experiments trying to design an appeasing style. Shading on grass is especially confusing for me.

[Stwelin]

Greeaaat improvement. The form is much clearer now, and it looks a lot more eye-catching. The one thing to remember though (and this is illustrated in Adam's drawing) is that right before the edge of the mushroom on the right (dark) side, you should use the midtone again, to show ambient light. In Adam's drawing you see that the darkest colour actually isn't used on the farthest right side, but only close to it, he then goes back to the midtone.

[Zee]

Wow that's a lot of improvement in such a short time.

[Obsidantion]

Thanks Stwelin for the comment. Ambient light makes so much sense to me as the light would bounce off of surrounding objects and reflect into shadows cast from the direct light source, but I would have never thought of it (great help for general pixeling knowledge). I used a hue shift into a pale blue for this ambient light. I calculated the colours by adjusting the hue, saturation and luminosity values in Paint's palette by even amounts between each shade (although I'm not sure that's the best method). Anyway here's my attempt at it.

Edit:

[Krut]

Hey man:

Basically i think its a gret improvement lightsource-wise i think you have AdamAtomic to thank for, since his example was really illustrative;

I think though, that your colour management is a step down since you have added a lot of unnessesary tones, and the original spirit of the first (wich was more comic-esque) has been lost with the new dither pattern; a bit messy for my tastes with the factor of newly added shades, make it seem more of a colour reduction than anything else  (but that may be your intention, and of course my opinion)

The first concern wich i expressed was the shape itself, that wasnt really polished, the outline of the head could be fixed a bit i think. So, this is what i would do.



First retouch the actual outline, making the curves and lines have more coherence.
The i would add maybe a bit more of those whitey things, but on a smaller scale, ill stablish the lightsource with the colours, a "bounce lightsource" on the back, and in there you can change the hues, towards an ambient lighting, (this in case you are planning to make it a small scene, should be according to it; duh.) change the outline to a variable light one acording to how you casted the lightsource, then i would antialias to make everything more curved, and make all the shades more integrated, and lastly, i would dither.

Keep pushing it, its looking better.

-Krut

[Obsidantion]

Thanks Krut. I much prefer your style to my noisy dithering especially for a game environment where you wouldn't want too much detail on the screen at once so players may identify objects easily. Your edit was extremely useful, I practically copied it and it has taught me about that comic-esque style I like. I left the mushroom at a slight tilt because I think it looks interesting.

Edit:

[Krut]

Personally, i like this aproach better aswell, though, i wasnt implying that you should leave it as comic-esque, it all depends on where you want to take it.

Remember though, to apply antialiasing to the sprite, and you can still dither to make the transitions smoother between one tone and another...or if you want the transitions to be really pronounced, you should at least antialias them.

I also think that that black may be a bit too much, change it for a dark red or blue.

Keep it up.

-Krut

[piotrek255]

great stuff! I'm amazed of the progress you made from that first piece 0_0

[Obsidantion]

I'm not sure how I would continue to dither or antialiase this now, or how it could progress. I'm not very experienced with using the techniques of pixelart.

[Feron]

if this is for a REAL game or even a mockup you need to take the background color into consideration, as i hope it wont be #ffffff white!

[Krut]

Hey man, just apply AA, heres a little bit of a rush example on the bottom part of the head.



-Krut

[LoTekK]

Wow, that's a heck of a lot of progress in very little time. The blue you've added to the shadowed side is a nice touch, though I agree that the black on the stalk needs to go. Bring some of that blue into the shadowed part of the stalk. Also, consider some hue shifting throughout the piece. Feron's right, though, lose the white background.

[Obsidantion]

I've expanded the image into a small scene. I intend to apply more detail with the techniques I've learnt so far in this thread but I thought I would post my attempt at the basic lighting before going on to do so, I'm not sure that I've got it right (the grass lighting in the bottom left is an experiment).

Edit:


Also I've updated the 5th edit with dithering and ambient lighting on the stalk as suggested.

[Zee]

Just wow... tree needs texture, so does the rest of that grass... you're good at this.

[Krut]

Fantastic progress man, may i suggest some sort of fireflies and little people interacting on the scene?

The lightsource seems correct, though watch for the mushrooms on your right, they should be darker (specially the last one on the right).

Remember to start replacing those hard black lines, and make good use of the AA, you can really take advantage of that since its a scene, if you also go out, and use some intelligent pallette integration, you can come up with some interesting colours on the piece.

Keep at it, its looking great.

-Krut

[Lawrence]

Nice work on this so far. On the newest piece I'm sensing some lighting discrepancies though. Looking at the shading of the mushrooms, and the shadows they cast, it seems you might have started shading the tree with the highlights a little too far to the left.

[Feron]

i would replace the giant mushrrom in the middle, it just doesn't look righ.  Good work so far, i can see this piece possibly being featured, we havent had a featurd piece for a while.

EDIT: damn typos, i can't type wen im drunk 

[Gil]

Great progress! I agree that this should be featured when done.

The grass shading on the new one doesn't work for me yet, but you'll fix that eventually...

[Obsidantion]

I haven't gone into detail still because I'm working on the fundamentals. In the scene some gnomes are trying to catch a glowing fly of some sort, maybe to use in a lantern, and one gnome is just having a nice relax against the tree. Thank you Zee, I’m quite stuck on ideas for the textures, they have to conform to the style of the piece. Could I ask for an example if you had anything particularly in mind? Thank you Krut for the ideas (I'll go into your more detailed suggestions after I've covered the basics). Thank you Lawrence for your well observed objections to the lighting of the tree (I hope I've managed to improve that). Thank you Feron, that giant mushroom was out of place (those things I've replaced it with are meant to be fungus rings). Thank you Gil, I have tried to improve the grass a little but if you have suggestions I will be glad.

Edit:


I’ve tried my best so far but there is a lot to improve upon.

[chigsam]

wow that is really awesome! For the texture on the hair make it little lines of 2 or 3 different colors is all i can say. Nice job on the grass!

oh and ne last thing, the steps look like hotdogs add a little texture to them

[abzdragon]

Ive enjoyed watching the progress on this piece. My advice would be to make the gnome's arms a little shorter. The one reaching up in particular looks far too long to me. I also agree that the last step looks surprisingly like a hotdog. Lookin' good.

[Obsidantion]

I meant the gnomes to look like they have hoods on Chigsam, but even then they should have more texture such as folds. Your right about the hotdogs (fungus), the whole piece needs texture now. I can see that abnormality now Abzdragon, their arms are too long. I think I might approach that problem by making the rest of their bodies bigger. Because of the nature of some of their positions, lessening their arm length doesn't appear feasible to me (such as with the highest gnome, holding on to the fungus). I'm truly stuck for ideas on texture, which is essentially what I think this piece needs now, so I'm going to do some research and see what I can learn. If anyone has some ideas on the matter I'd be grateful to hear from them.