Chibi Fighter

[Helm]

The critique you've gotten in this thread is the exact opposite of useless, and it's very insulting to say what you said. Do whatever you want, but the facts is that you sprite is malformed, out of balance, with awkward color selection, readability issues and a lack of any redeeming features, and if you don't like to hear that then you won't survive in a critique environment like this one. I've noticed that you don't take critique generally and it's just a matter of time until people just stop giving it to you. You'll be the only one reading your threads eventually, and I don't know if this suits you fine, but it's certainly not the way pixelation is supposed to work.

Start taking critique, reevaluate what it is you're doing here, or just take your art elsewhere for asspats and useless comments. Never disrespect people's kindness and eagerness to take time out of their day to help you again, or things will get ugly.

[sharprm]

 A big problem is the right arm looks like it is coming out of the head. The left arm looks more reasonable. You should make the arms the same height by lowering his right arm. Or if you want the
'strong mad' look (from homestar runner) then make the left arm up a bit.

You should draw his left eye in.

Move his left foot to the right a bit.

Make his gloves have a different color to his clothes.

His body is strange, two squares seem weird. What kind of clothes is he wearing?

[Andy Tran]

Aite, thanks.

[Jad]

Yo, thought I should drop by to pour salt in your wounds. Just kidding :>

I wouldn't agree to AdamAtomic's tone, even though I know where the frankness comes from, I think using words like 'Bad' and 'Ugly' can discourage some people too much, and since I want to see the potential of EVERYONE realized, I don't want you to go to another forum where you get ass-patted but never release your potential. So there.

Now, here's the deal:



Let's say I posted this. What do I get from the users of Pixelation? I get, for example:

"Eyes are at a weird angle"

"He has no backhead"

"Hair looks like a bunch of sausages"

"Not visually appealing at all, go over it before you add color"

"neck is awkwardly placed"

"the space between the mouth and nose is too big, it looks stupid and completely unrealistic"

Oh my, they're not liking it! Dangit! So what do I do?

Add color and say "The style of the eyes were what I wanted to go with from the start, the mouth and nose doesn't have to be realistically placed, they're not supposed to be that way, they're more like manga-style, watch some anime, you'll see that all the time, they're not flaws, they're STYLE!"

Yeah, sure. Now people will surely be shutting up. I mean, they just don't understand my style, right?

Sorry for the sarcastic tone, I am confident that you get what I mean. Because, of course they won't shut up.

What they saw wasn't 'things that contrasted to their extremely narrow view of ART that sadly didn't include MY style', they saw 'things that looked funny to them.'

And if I ask myself with this picture, what did I want to achieve? To be frank, I just wanted to draw some western-copy-shonen-manga style face. So yeah, a lot of the critique is valid. Even though they distort it, most japanese artists still try and follow conventions regarding facial anatomy, and, well, that looks the best IMO. So:

Don't polish the surface, polish the damn BASE.



Whoa! This is looking kind of shitty. Still, it's an improvement. And there are still stylistic choices there. The pencil-neck is, although still quite unnaturally thin, better placed. Mouth and nose have been moved to more realistic positions, but in no way are they 'slavingly following the rules of realistic anatomy'. Eyes have funky shape but are better aligned. He has a back-head. Sausage hair is retained because I think it has potential. (shoulders are looking extremely bad, though, and chin is pouting weirdly)

Like that. You CAN take critique, improve, and still have your style. Don't be afraid! :D

SO.

Since you have a problem taking critique to heart because people blatantly call your artwork 'ugly' (And don't worry, so do I, when that happens.), I'll go in depth.



Why do people call it unbalanced? Because it is. Check it out.

The sillhouette is unbalanced, and since he's supposed to be standing straight up, that's a problem. See the base of his legs? And then the top of his head? The line between them is leaning, and thus HE is as well. Just look at it for a while and think about it. I'm not going to rant about it. I'm showing you why people say it's unbalanced, that's all :3



His legs are pointing outwards unnaturally much. His torso seems to be turned against us, but his head is turned to his left. The legs are just boots with no joints. How does he move them? Also, they're different sizes for no apparent reason, their placement on the ground seem to be the same distance from the viewer. His arms are wonky as well, especially his left arm (our right), which goes behind his torso for some reason. I tried standing like that and it was really uncomfortable. He's a fighter, why would he stand in awkward uncomfortable positions? He should be in kick-ass-mode :O

His head is placed, frankly, way too low. It looks freaky. I'm not trying to be rude, because why would I want to make you angry or sad? :< And even better, it's easy to fix. Just move it up a bit. I mean, where there should be an ear, right now, there's a shoulder. If he's not a hunchback, you'd want his head to rest on the TOP of his torso, even if he has no neck.

And now just some examples on body composition which I hope will inspire you:



How I would've concieved it. Since he's standing straight in yours, he's doing the same in mine. I guess that's becuase he's a proud one, so I gave him a proud stance. It's like 'I'm not even gonna bother with keeping my guard up, not before you gome at me!' or something. He's a little buff, though.



I thought that burly maybe was the way you wanted to go. So I made this one. I hate it. I think you do too. Sorry :]



... But really, keeping a good stance is vital for a fighter. OH WHOOPS THIS STANCE KIND OF SUCKS (Mirre would hit me for this one :<) but hey, it looks cool and rowdy. Like 'Yeah, here's the guard, but I'm to busy bouncing around looking cool to actually care until you actually try and hit me rarararar'.

And so.

All of these at least have some joints, more emphasis on individual joints and that creepy anime-face. :] I hope you become a bit inspired.

Oh, and lastly, your color choices and polish are at a level way beyond your skills in composition. That's why no one mentions it, AND that's why you're recieving such harsh critique. If your lines were shit and your colour was eye-burning gradient crap, people wouldn't even have bothered commenting.

Now people see your potentilal and want to help wring it out! Please try! You're the only one who can do it! :D

plus, train with composition and anatomy. Not necessarily super-realistic anatomy (Helm says: Yes he should D:<) but rather trying to concieve a believable shape with your images. It'll be more fun that way.

That's all :O

[Andy Tran]

Thanks man. I'm working on another chibi after using some of these ideas. At before, I thought of using this style of shading on his clothes and skin. Humans skins can be shiny too. I have shiny skin myself. Shading depends on the style whatsoever.
 

[bengo]

I'm not seeing any improvement and with all the help you're getting come on man, you're just telling me how human skin can be shiny due to sweat and very very close light sources(Think about it, he boxes, which means lights right above him along with him being very very sweaty).

[Faktablad]

Oh please.

Can you do me a favor and just TRY applying what Jad said?  Just TRY.  It may not be what you want to do, but who cares?  You can save it as another file.  After you've TRIED making it look better based on the very generous critique that Jad has SO kindly written for you, see if you like it.  Just step back and see if you think it's better or not.  Just give it a TRY, PLEASE.  What do you have to lose?

You very well may have a style that you like.  If so, can you deny that going outside of your style once in a while is a good exercise IN ITSELF, REGARDLESS of who the artist is?

[AdamAtomic]

If it sounds like I'm being extra-harsh, it's because you seem to be pretty well set in your ways, and like most of your threads you will work on the polish level only, rather than having the guts to tackle the fundamental problems that are crippling your work.

Just saying.

But here, you want something more concrete?  How about a list.  This is a list of the things that are wrong with this piece regardless of the intended style:

• He has no ears; his shoulders come out of his jaw.
• He has no waist.
• He has no knees.
• He has no left (our right) eye.
• If he has hands, I can't really see them.

These are not stylistic concerns.  These are "this work has severe problems on lots of levels" concerns.  Forget everything else anybody has typed out here so far, except Jad's phenomenal crit that you completely ignored.  Please put at least a minimal amount of effort into making this character look human if only to respect the effort Jad put in earlier.

[Jad]

I really support Faktablad's suggestion of making an entirely new piece.

I wouldn't reccomend Street Fighter II's shading style, because it's basically pillow shading with detail. I think you could aim higher :O

But that's just an opinion. Of course.

[Souly]

He looks like all his limb are fuzed to his body..
His legs are rediculously huge.

Seriously, take a look at Jad's edit.
And you'll see everything you're doing wrong...