witcher portraits WIP

[Mathcong]

Hello,

A while back i made a ciri portrait 32x32 pixels, and had alot of fun.

So i made a geralt one, but it doesnt feel as strong as the ciri one:





maybe i added too many details ?, would love to know any advice to improve them

some of the references i used:

[Mathcong]

removed the dithering, was too distracting imo, and made some clusters in the hair better

new:

old: 

i feel like the scars mess up alot of readability in the face, but then again i wanne keep them because they are iconic to the character :/

without scars:

[fskn]

Well, the scars don't *have* to be red, though, do they?




Ciri's could also be subtler.


(not sure if it looks better, though.)

[fskn]

So, I sharpened things a bit, reshaped the beard and the face, making it a tad more angular.
And added the scars back. Still not so sure about them...



And worked on Ciri a little more, making her nose smaller and giving that other lock of hair. Hopefully it reads as that.



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EDIT: Or if you wanna smooth out the heck out of everything using colors from the pauldron on his face:



That pale yellow could also be used, but he looked rather sickly when I tried adding it:

[Mathcong]

Thanks for the Edits fskn!

really liked you additions to the hair, and ciri's nose

also added a bit of the darker colour of the pauldron to the face





Tried some different lighting on the face, not sure if its better




I know the way i light his face is different from the reference, trying to simplify it a bit , with just light from the right like this:

[fskn]

I find it hard to grasp the form of the head, especially with the cheek scar being so dark. I guess darkening that eye and a bit of AA on the scar would help.

Considering your lighting reference, how about if you made the left (his right) side of the head darker with the other browns?

or even

I'm not too much of a fan of using white in the eyes as it's such a bright color. The orange also kind of mixes with the brown so it's hard to read it as the iris.

EDIT: More prominent bridge of the nose..?



The mustache was way too bright now that it was between two dark lines (shadow of the nose/mouth), so I darkened it a bit.

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How about that darker tan for the upper lip?



EDIT 2: rewrote a bit of the post, it didn't make much sense before.

[Mathcong]

Finally had some to to work on this some more

pretty happy with geralt for now, made a start on dandelion and triss



references used :

[fskn]

Dandelion looks cross-eyed...

Again, I wouldn't use white for the white of the eyes because they look so big and bright, and instead would make it more implied. Although that could be part of what you're going for with the other portraits...

I would raise his muzzle a bit to give him more of a chin, which seems to be pretty characteristic of his...

So something like this:


(he does look a little bit evil now, though.)

I also lowered the hat a bit on the right. In the reference it comes down under the height of his nose, if you trace an horizontal line there.

[Mathcong]

Using the white highlight is more of a style thing for me i guess, i like it because i feel like it livens up the eyes :p

you are totally right about the chin, looks alot more like him

Some more edits, dandelion was very contrast-heavy, so i darkened the other portraits as well:

[fskn]

I tried my hand at Triss, doing to usual shameless cheating just so I could get the proportions as close as I could, only trying to translate it to pixel art using your colors... Or to be more specific, I reduced the image and pixelated over yours while looking at the now smaller reference.



What I got from that was that the shape of her head (including the hair) is pretty round kinda like you did, but it tapers off a bit at the top.
You can see that if you try to fit a circle inside of the head, like:



Kind of like an apple seen from the front, but turned upside down, maybe?

Also notice how much her head is tilting:


(edit: threw in a couple plumb lines.)


And the jawline isn't as pointy. Adding more to the sides would make it look more like her, I think.

I worked a little more on Dandelion too. Now I think that the previous smirk was a tad too strong, so I tried making it a little more subdued with a shorter 'stache.



Maybe throw in some of that light purple for good measure?