[WIP] Shukaku Sand Spirit

[K_G]

Yo guys. First time postin here, could use some help. This icons for a game of mine that im making. Its the first finished version i've done, but i still am not really pleased with it. I will try to give the shading more contrast soon, but my main problems are the arms and the tail. To me the arms dont look long enouh, and im not quite sure what to do with them since im no good at anatomy. Also the tail is just pillow shaded atm which i hate but im not quite sure what to do with it either. Any suggestions would be great.

[Rydin]

Really the whole thing is pillow shaded right now.  Luckily there's an easy fix for pillow shading: define the light source .


(quick and damn messy, but still)
The light source is the top left for my example, but you can still have it be the front, or anywhere, just make sure you let the light hit the sprite as a whole, not each individual "cell" or outline in the sprite.  Light hits the entire sand spirit, not each little section of tail or belly individually.  Does that make sense? Otherwise I could describe it more.


Good luck!

[K_G]

Yea i get what your sayin. I had intended for the light source to be like above its head shining down on it. But i guess it didnt come out right lol As far as the lineart for the arms, do you have any suggestions?

[`Rob]

Hi, Rydin's edit pretty much said it all with the lightsource, but there's some banding issues with it, i've tried correcting just a little section on the tail, but i'm not very good, so i hope you can see what i mean.



If this doesnt help, helm did a really nice post on a thread about banding which should help clarify it for you, if anyone can find it 

[0renji]

At the moment it looks like the light source is coming from in front of the spirit. If the light is coming straight down from above, it wouldn't make sense for there to be shadows on the uppermost body parts (like the shoulders and top of head) because that's where the light is striking most directly. Also the belly is shaded so that the lightest part is directly in the middle and this part is quite large and draws the eye, it definitely makes it read like the light is in front - move the highlight to the top of the belly and shadows to the bottom. I guess overall the piece could use more contrast since you don't have a highlight shade at all, only different levels of shadow. Higher highlights on the blue horns and claws would also make them look sharper and smoother.

For the tail, it's kind of hard to discern what material it's made of... shaggy fur or scales? Looks like scales but the blurry shading makes it sort of look furry.

The spirit's face and overall shape looks awesome though!

[K_G]

Thanks for the suggestions, sorry for a late reply i've been having to move on to other pixel projects for the game since icons like this on the site i pixel for are in the above average category. Perfecting them was just something i was doing in my own personal time. I moved on to doing a snake which i have tried to implement some of your suggestions. So take a peak at that if you'd like. Thx again i'll try to get to editing this one and posting it up soon.