New Sprite: Dark Young

[absinthelord]

This is a creature based on the H.P. Lovecraft inspired game Call of Cthulhu. I'm planning to animate it and use it for a game project of my own....




Dark Young of Shub Niggerauth

[thedaemon]

You highlight everything with no light source. Pick a light source and stick with it. Think about the volumes you are trying to represent as a whole, not individual pieces. Especially the center of the character. The dithering is hideous. At this stage you should take it completely away. With these color choices I don't think you even need any. They are too close in value. I think you should make at least one mouth open. Also, try not to mirror poses, ie the feet. I know it's twice the work but it pays off in the long run. You have what looks like two sets of lips. The green ring around then the tan lips around. I would take away the extra green lip.Overall a nice piece but I think you could make it much better with a bit more time.

[absinthelord]

Highlighting and shading is something I've been working on, and I appreciate the comments.    I was going for a straight-on light source, and no dithering caused a pillow shaded effect that was even more hideous. The lips were not really "lips", but a sort of "gums".


"Think about the volumes you are trying to represent as a whole, not individual pieces..."

Could you elaborate more on this? This really seems to be the key to the success or failure of my pieces...

[Sherman Gill]

  I was going for a straight-on light source, and no dithering caused a pillow shaded effect that was even more hideous.

Dithering won't make it not pillowshaded. A straight on lightsource is exactly what pillowshading is (Well, that and a combination of trying to use shading to achieve depth regardless of shapes).

Quick and rough edit on the central area.
First off, as I kinda said before, straight on lightsource is bad, and should be avoided!
Your pillowshading not only has the unfortunate effect of looking rather bad, it also serves to make everything look super segmented and disconnected, so, to reiterate- or translate, I guess -TheDaemon's comment, before shading something think of how the shapes are connected. Why would there be an indent deep and steep enough to be significantly darker then it's immediate surroundings?
Also, hard to judge but you might know this already, but in earth creatures, all movement is accomplished by muscles contracting, so whenever your mouth opens, the muscles that are pulling on it portrude more, which is why there's the part sticking out in my edit on our right. This is of course un-needed is the creature has a hard shell.

[TrevoriuS]

For a HP lovecraft theme, a bit of backlight would do good and add to the dark atmosphere. You by the way brought this one out quite well =)