Tentacles suck

[Fizz]

This is a early WIP of a cthulhu piece I'm working on. (The rest of the body is not shown)  My problem is that I can't figure out a way to shade the tentacles in a pleasing looking way.  Maybe thinning them would help, but I'm not aiming to draw the scary cthulhu.

[Tremulant]

I think part of the problem might stem from the fact that (in my eyes, anyway) the tentacles are a bit too thin or... something. Not... I dunno, chunky or tentacley enough. I did a quick edit:



I'm not really sure, and it's not a great edit. It's a suggestion, anyway.

[Fizz]

I can't get those high saturation blue and green colors.  Pixen has a different color profile or something.  It makes all the colors more washed out.  Does anyone know of a better pixel program for the mac?

[Fizz]

Yay! lots of progress.  It doesn't look so good still..  Any ideas on how to add intrest to the back of the head?

[JonathanOfDrain]

I don't really like the blue, it works fine but it's kind of ?boring?. I made a dumb edit, kind of a waste of time, hopefully you can use it.
I think a shell would be neat. It'd be like a helmet sort of dealy.

:\ I don't like the blue.

[rabidbaboy]

I like JoD's edit to the colors, except the brown could be less saturated.
I think a hunched pose would be fitting.

I like how this is turning out.

[bengo]

I actually disagree with JoD's color choice, to be completely honest, its more boring now than it was before, the blue was what made it interesting. I am in favor of an object of some sort behind the squid, right now the back of his head looks.... flat, there also seems to be a hint of pillow shading back there aswell.

[Fizz]

An extra shade of green smoothed the back of the head out..  I know the dithering looks out of place, but I'm going to dither the rest of the body too.  As for the back of the head, I will also wait until the body is done to see if anything would good back there.

[Arachne]

I wouldn't dither much on a small piece like this. You already have a lot of colors to work with, and since it's something that looks like a sea creature, it should be slimy. Desaturate. The darkest blues, especially, which I also brought a bit closer to purple to contrast more with the greens. I'd also go for something more like sel-out rather than solid, 1 pixel wide outlines.

[Fizz]

It's not that small, you haven't seen what's down below!   Thanks for the useful edit.