[wip] midori portrait

[archduke of hazzard]

well, i've been lurking for the past few days, reading up on old c&c topics, discussion/debate threads, and other such things while eyeing my current work and trying to incorporate what i've learned into it.

however, i'm at "wit's end" as my friend puts it. i'm pretty unhappy with this particular piece (my first real attempt at pixel art)-- it doesn't seem to have enough contrast.


(it's going to be set within the border, hence the way the edges cut off there; if that isn't kosher, i'll try to fix it  )

no matter what i do, everything seems too "washed" out, and when i try to select colors with the HSL method, they're either too stark, too dark, too light... my understanding of color theory seems to be failing me, haha.

obvious problems are the imbalance of the cheeks (or maybe the facial construction in general?) and maybe that the highlights are too strong and distracting. i really am having a problem with the highlights in general-- note my indecisiveness about the hair in the links below. (it's also still very messy at the bottom, as you can see. i was trying to go for a kind of flipped hairstyle, but it doesn't feel like i can translate it well)

the nose could probably use some work, too, despite me trying to inject some style into it. and i've tried to keep my lines neat, but after reading a few discussions on banding, i fear that i might be doing that as well.

also, i apologize for the overtly anime-ish look of the eye. if i didn't add a highlight, it'd look somewhat dead, though now that i think about it, her gaze doesn't seem particularly focused. i tried to give her a determined looking-slightly-upward-look, but it seems that it didn't turn out well, either.


sorry for all of the self-flagellation, i suppose it's my roundabout way of both acknowledging the picture's current faults and asking what to do about them.

here are some earlier stages (pardon the zoom, i took screencaps instead of saving individual images. the real size should be in the preview window-- let me know if i need to crop it anyway, though linked because theyre kind of big):

http://i44.tinypic.com/2ro2nbc.png
http://i42.tinypic.com/smzjox.png
http://i40.tinypic.com/w9b4oo.png
http://i42.tinypic.com/2m345ty.png
http://i43.tinypic.com/3088orc.png
http://i39.tinypic.com/20p79qb.png

let me know if you think it's necessary for me to revert to any of the earlier stages, or if i need to elaborate more. thanks for reading through this. i hope i didn't do anything wonky 

[Souly]

I felt the face seemed dollish.
I think your problem is the right cheek is bigger then the left one by a bunch.
Kind of turned that into an eat, did a bunch if nitpick cleaning.
Have an eye over it you'll see what I did.

[EyeCraft]

hey archduke. I've done a bit of a messy edit to highlight some structural issues in the piece;



You've got to be conscious of the planes typical of a face, mainly to do with the forehead and the cheeks.