Ellen Ripley (Gameboy Palette)

[SeDiceBisonte]

Whew! Been a bit of a busy day so I haven't been able to work on this quite as much as I'd have liked. That means this isn't at the stage I wanted to post it at (I still haven't tracked down the jaggies although I did sort the curl on the forehead because I was doing the hair anyway). Hopefully the lines on the hair are cleaner thanks to your advice, Chonky Pixel. This is quite a dramatic update in other ways since Harmonica! on Pixel Joint suggested dropping to four colours (removing one of my mid-shades) and redoing the shading with the areas of light and shadow more consolidated (for want of a better term). His edit convinced me to try it out and I'm happy with the results, although my level of skill is impeding my progress as far as refinement goes.

I think that's given her a more three-dimensional appearance, and the likeness has been improved by that and dpixel's points about the features. As it stands, the eyes are too big but I've run out of time today and wanted to post an update in case anything I've done was a bad idea.

One thing I'm particularly unsure of is my dithering. I've tried to retain the scan line look where possible, but the greater use of highlighting necessitates a greater amount of dither which I think is hard to get right, especially when you're the one doing it. After you've viewed it zoomed-in for hours, you do lose a sense of how it looks (even though I have a 100% scale window open all the time so I can see the whole picture). It might be hard to judge at all from this image since it's obviously in progress. I'm hoping that I develop a sense for it after enough practice.

Thanks for posting so much information. It's been very useful. I tried to use the horizontal dither everywhere but I couldn't get it to look right on the face for the most part. I'll continue smoothing out the shading as best I can tomorrow and hopefully move on to fixing all the jagged lines I can find.

[fskn]

Personally, those colors are really hard to work with, esp. the second lightest green is super bright for a midtone. I would have chosen a more muted version of the GB palette, such as:


DirtyBoy, or


Andrade.

But speaking of shape and form, and comparing your drawing to the reference, there are some noticeable differences:

On yours, she seems to be looking slightly to the left and her face seems tilted down a bit. Whereas in the reference she's looking straight at us.
Bringing the highlight of the nose up a bit and adding a highlight on the chin would bring it forward and up a bit.
The ears are just a bit too high.
The eyes on yours are more rounded at the bottom, flatter at the top. In the reference, it's the other way around. They could be slightly narrower too. And the eyelids just a bit thinner.
The mouth should be wider, and the part between the bottom lip and the teeth should be flatter. The inner corners of the mouth could be darker.
The jaw could be even more square.
You could use some softening on the shadow part of the chin, and a bit on the highlight of the forehead, bringing that to the right, over the right eyebrow.

I'm not really a fan of that single darker pixel on her teeth, as it makes it look like there's a gap in between them.

I guess that's it... But it's looking pretty good already. Just needs a few tweaks.

[Chonky Pixel]

Some of your dithering reminds me of the work of "Yes I Do" on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Contra_Bonos/status/1257405915868913668/photo/1

https://twitter.com/Contra_Bonos/status/1250768681489125379/photo/3

https://twitter.com/Contra_Bonos/status/1237373036426342401/photo/2

I find this guy's work pretty inspirational. Some of the dithering techniques he uses may be worthy of a little study.

[SeDiceBisonte]

Progress update:

I've done a pass for jaggies on the jumpsuit but I haven't searched over the rest of it yet in case anything drastic still needs doing. That'll be one of the last things I do before calling it complete.

Personally, those colors are really hard to work with, esp. the second lightest green is super bright for a midtone. I would have chosen a more muted version of the GB palette...

I felt quite married to the green initially because I felt it suited the subject matter (not sure why since, if anything, the film is very blue. Maybe the poster is influencing me) but I tried each of those out and both options looked so much better. Just from looking at the colours in your post, I thought I'd prefer Andrade but, after seeing them on the piece, I went for DirtyBoy. I've included the image in the other palette at the bottom of this post for the curious.

As for the anatomical points, I've worked on all of them although I haven't yet managed to get the highlight to work on the brow, so that's currently unchanged. I'm going to keep trying but I haven't come close to cracking it yet.

I find this guy's work pretty inspirational. Some of the dithering techniques he uses may be worthy of a little study.

That is incredible! I've had a look and will continue to study his work (and others) to see what I can apply to my own.

Thanks as ever for all the great critiques.

Alternate palette:
Here's the Andrade. I thought I liked it more for a minute but I think that's just because it's brighter. On reflection, I decided there was better contrast with my skin tone and the highlight with DirtyBoy which gave the piece more volume.

[fskn]

I spent a couple hours last night and early afternoon today working on your piece...because I thought it was a fun thing to do, but ended up going a bit overboard, especially with the dithering, but I hope it helps seeing what I did and what I think could be improved.
There was some cheating involved, I admit.



The bulk of the work went to the mouth/nose/eyes area, left shoulder, the part of the uniform that goes across her chest and the overall shape of the hair.

[SeDiceBisonte]

Thanks – that's very helpful, although my edit will probably be very disappointing as a result.

I studied the changes for a while but attempts to replicate them looked odd, largely because the shape of the head in mine is off. Probably the main thing to take away from this is that I need to sketch a lot more faces (and general anatomy) and get my eye in more, which will be my next course of action. I'm inclined to post a WIP earlier in the process of my next image so it's easier to fix such large mistakes. I'd also intended to move onto a piece that wasn't copied from a single reference image although now I think it might be a good idea to try something else like this. Walking before running, and all that.

Here's what I'm calling my final version of this. I wanted to avoid large patches of dither and maybe this just isn't the palette for doing that. I haven't disregarded your edit, but I have reached the limit of my ability with this piece. Hopefully my next one will be better 


A couple of questions:
The lack of dithering on the uniform was an attempt to convey a different texture to either the hair or the face. Do I take it that this wasn't working very well? Your edit only uses it sparingly on the uniform, but I'm not sure if that's just because there are bigger problems with the head.

Similarly, the way I've done the top of the right (picture-wise) shoulder patch was attempting to convey the softer fabric of the jumpsuit creasing over the more rigid edge of the patch. I know I exaggerated the appearance a bit, but does this not read well?

Was attempting to evoke scan lines with the shading a bad idea?

Thanks again to everyone for all of the critiques and information.

[Edited to quickly add in a couple of pixels on the shoulder patch]

[fskn]

A couple of questions:
The lack of dithering on the uniform was an attempt to convey a different texture to either the hair or the face. Do I take it that this wasn't working very well? Your edit only uses it sparingly on the uniform, but I'm not sure if that's just because there are bigger problems with the head.

Similarly, the way I've done the top of the right (picture-wise) shoulder patch was attempting to convey the softer fabric of the jumpsuit creasing over the more rigid edge of the patch. I know I exaggerated the appearance a bit, but does this not read well?

Was attempting to evoke scan lines with the shading a bad idea?

I didn't work much on the jumpsuit because I was trying to keep myself focused on her likeness. Only at the very end I decided to look around for any other things that could be fixed, and there wasn't anything major with the jumpsuit.
Actually, I consider most of what I did were tweaks, except maybe for the eyes and the mouth.
By comparing your image with the reference, it seemed to me that some areas could benefit from a tone in between the 2 darkest ones just to give it a bit more detail... But it does work well without it. It was one of those things that I didn't know if I should do, but ended up doing anyway...although I probably should have added it in other areas as well, not just to a single spot.

I couldn't help myself in softening some areas with dithering, maybe I should have tried to keep it to a very minimum.

So, yeah. I used it to soften the face, then decided to use it on the arm, then said what the heck, let's use it on the neck and ...weeeell, let's put some of it on the jumpsuit as well.
Yours is much more consistent.

Oh the shoulder folds, it does read as that. I was just trying to copy the original image.

I really like your style of using lines instead of just dithering to soften some areas, it has a very cool look to it; I just didn't use it because it would be harder for me to try and emulate. As I have made some dither brushes in Photoshop, it was just a matter of grabbing those and painting in some larger-ish areas instead of painting dot by dot by dot.
But maybe it should have been used in the whole picture as a single style of "dither", similar to using hatching instead of stippling when you're drawing pen and ink, and not both things at the same time.
Not that that's wrong, but maybe it would improve the image? I don't really know.

Does it evoke scanlines? Sorta. It may need a bunch more to really sell that.

[SeDiceBisonte]

I hope I can get to the point where I consider these revisions tweaks. It's quite major to my eyes!

A fifth tone would be good in there, but my original extra colour wasn't really adding much. I probably could've customized the palette but I was worried that if I added in an extra thing to worry about (working with palettes) then I'd learn less about any one of them. I intend to work on my own palette for whatever I do next, which is likely to be another portrait from reference.

I think if the dithering came naturally then it makes sense – yours is consistent as well in its greater use of it. That's a good tip about the Photoshop brush. I used so little dithering that I hadn't developed a need for a dedicated brush, but that idea will likely save me time down the road, especially for quickly getting a sense of shading in large areas. I agree that the mixture of shading methods doesn't quite work but the lines started to look like objects in the image when used less sparingly. From the pieces Chonky Pixel shared, it looks like both horizontal and vertical pixel placement is better for simulating an extra tone. I think I was trying to do too much with mine - breaking up the long lines by offsetting them vertically to suggest form (which scanlines obviously don't do) and transitioning them into traditional dither. Maybe something to try again when I have more of an idea what I'm doing.

I tested out a scan line backdrop to hammer the point home but it got a little busy. I think an extra tone would help with that too.

Thanks for the replies!