Tips for a better hair's shade

[tecnologgamer]

I remade few of my hair examples and I think they get better, except the last one that it's really messy and I personally hate, it's awful for me because it's blond hair and I can't managed how to shade a full straight hair like this.



This is'nt the original reference (I lost all), but it near what I want to do.

[Chonky Pixel]

I think your top one is looking great!

The middle one is showing a lot of improvement from the version on the left, adding shape and shading and removing those hard lines. However, as my ham-fisted attempts to promote the reduction of noise, good cluster work and good line work have been (probably quite fairly) called into question, I'll point you at this resource and humbly request that you search-in-page for "noise" and "clusters": http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

With the bottom one, I think you are right in that you're moving away from representing the style of hair you want to. The version on the left actually seems closer to the reference than the one on the right.

To be fair, you've started in a direction that gives the hair a lot of shape, detail, volume and shading. You've lost the smooth feel though, and the reference image looks smooth.

I can tell you how I would approach it, and that would be similar to my first responses - just a further refinement of the process you started on the left. But saying that, at this point, it's difficult to say "x technique will be objectively better" because I'm not sure how you want your final result to look. Do you have examples of pixel artists with styles you want to get closer to? If so, some analysis from someone who isn't as close to your work may bring up some pointers to help you achieve it.

[dpixel]

I can suggest try to avoid using single pixels.  It can look too busy real fast.
Think of locks of hair rather than strands at this size
The bottom-left one looks best imo.  It has better shapes and volumes.

For me, I need to think of the image as a whole, so I need some facial features to put it together.
I would tend to do something this:

[tecnologgamer]

Hey guys, I'm late, i just give about the the hair that I could afford and reshade the I could. But, as far I see in hair references the light can be stronger or more weak depend of hair shape, straight hair like the above example here @dpixel made the good favor to do it, the lights in real world would work different because the hair lines are more individual while other hears like curvy have more concetrated hair and receive more lights. Well, this is just a theory mine.

[Chonky Pixel]

I may look more closely at the styles later, if you're interested, but what I am thinking right now is:

Why isn't any of the hair casting a shadow?

I know that you don't want to draw the faces, but the shadow that the hair casts gives it more 3D information. Volume. Implied shape.

Where you put your shadow can tell the viewer if hair is jutting out or flush against the head.

If you add some shadows you might see a big improvement in the realism of your hair.

[tecnologgamer]

Oh, okay!

[Chonky Pixel]

I think the shadows are mainly looking great. And the act of adding them has given a lot more depth to the images.

The rightmost shadow on the second row might be a bit big. To me the face looks concave, as if it goes inwards rather than outwards. Should be an easy fix.

Based on one of the examples posted by Marie Taylor, I thought I would show you a possible process for achieving a smooth style. I am nowhere near as good as the people who made those examples, so just I hope you can find something in here that helps. I want to share a few ideas, and images are a better way to do that.



Time is limited, so I'm only going to work on the two clumps in the top-right. I often start by using block colours for different chunks of the image. This style uses outlines, so I'm leaving them in.



Here I've tried to clean up a lot of the line-work. I've eliminated the hard corners I could find, turning them into curves. I've also eliminated all the jaggies I could see. I believe I already shared the Pixel Joint pixel-art primer with you, which I think covers line work, curves and jaggies. If you want me to go into greater detail about this process, ask.

I've put a flick in the hair. You may not like this - but I would expect you to approach shape and shading differently to me anyway.



I've thickened the lower part of the dividing line between the two clumps, and removed the top. The lower part represents shadow, and the lack of line at the top shows that the two clumps join further up to make one surface.



My wife didn't like the blank faces, so I put in some features. : )

I've added some lighter shade, and darkened the bottom of the clump at the back. There's a brighter line extending from the top of the split between clumps, to represent (I assume) the light catching the edge of the clump.



I found I didn't have much room to work with. I would have liked to create a smoother effect using clusters, but I didn't have the space. I used anti-aliasing instead. I also pulled a little bit of the darker area from the parting into the main body of the hair, to add to the texture.

What I'm trying to do is "suggest" the hairy texture and hair clump shape by following the direction of the hair with my clusters, shapes and lines of shading. I don't want to follow a single hair all the way down in the same colour. To me, doing that breaks the shading and makes the whole image look more flat.

With a bit more space I could put one or more gaps in the line, and the effect would still work. I probably could at this size, too.

I also moved some of the shading, as I didn't like the original position.



Just some final tidying up, removing some subtle jaggies, and a little change to the highlight on the hair flick. I thought breaking it up like this might make it look a bit more hair-like.

I could go on, but I've covered the ideas I wanted to convey. If you find anything in there useful, I'm glad. If you don't like this direction, then it was a fun exercise anyway. : )

[tecnologgamer]

It's really good, thanks for help.

I want to thank everyone that have the patience to teach me well, I need to read to assimilate everthing that you guys told me, but I pretend to learn more.

Special thanks for @Marie Taylor because he revive this topic.