[WIP & Nudity] Mushroom Chick

[xdjkittiex]

Hey all, this is my first submission here.
This is what I have so far - my mushroom warrior chick. 
I need to cut her arms off and redo them because they look disfigured / broken and her hands are disfigured & over-sized.

I need some help tearing her anatomy apart and maybe some suggestions on what to do with her bottom half?  I was going to give her a mushroom stump for a bottom half but I thought about it and want her to be able to have movement.  So maybe vines or something?  Just not sure how to go about it.  Any suggestions are appreciated and thanks in advance


(sketched with tablet and then brought down to 1pixel.)


UPDATE:
(sorry it took so long to update this - school picked up and so did work and I got enough time to work on it just yesterday!)



Changed the hair - straight hair started to bug me
Colored everything
Fixed the proportion issues
Never did figure out what to do with her bottom half though. 

[Salvage]

massive canvas!
its going to be a lot of work at this large scale, especially if this is only half of the character.
if you want to focus on anatomy and proportions, a smaller composition will enable you to conceptualize things better and not be tempted to fill this space with details.
i think you need a complete figure first, then anatomy critique will be more forthcoming.
its hard to balance half a figure, go ahead with you vines or stalk idea.

[Helm]

Helmy Patent Non-destructive Anatomy Edit (tm) Approaches!!

(C)ombat, (H)ail, (F)lee? >_



I really like your original piece so far I have to say. I like the posture because it gives character. I'm also very glad to see a realistic hips and bellies in girls and not that awful idealized-by-proxy stuff most people do. My edit addresses a few issues you'll need to look out for:

* shoulders, if anything for a warrior would need to be a bit wider
* arms, do arms studies
* breasts need to be apart a bit more
* avoid 'shoop' type bellybuttons like in marvel comics or some anime. Belly buttons can be innies or outies and have all sorts of wonderful different shapes!
* I gave her some generic legs.

Personally I find the whole pose a bit static so if you're willing to re-place all limbs I'd go with her sitting on a rock or on a warrior steed or something, the sky's the limit from where you are now and it's time to make these artistic decisions before starting rendering.
 
On top of everything, a lot of non-obvious volumetric issues are illustrated for your convinience.

Now, as far as the pixel artisms go, this is a big image, you might want to work smaller, you only can tell if you have the guts to finish a big piece like this.

[xdjkittiex]

Salvage -
Sorry - I normally work with large canvases and forget how they show up for other viewers. - (a few canvases have been 205 x 700 pixels)
Although I'm going to keep the same canvas size, I'll definitely finish with the rest of the anatomy before I ask more critique.  Thanks for the suggestions

Helm -
Thank you for the anatomy edit   I'll take all that was given into consideration while I'm editing.
Also thanks for the comment on the hips and belly - I try to steer away from the Barbie look that most girls in art get.

Thanks for all of your suggestions


 

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

:]
i love this lineart
her face is really cute, but i can see some kind of problem with the position of her arms, I can't really tell what.
Maybe you should make the musroom hat a bit larger

cheers!

[PypeBros]

i can see some kind of problem with the position of her arms, I can't really tell what.

well, it's easier to see on helm's edit. the elbow comes too late on the arm, making abnormally long arms with the muscle of the forearm surprisingly short, as if she was wearing a bracelet rather than it was herself.

[xdjkittiex]

UPDATE!

I know it took me forever to fix it - school and work both picked up and I didn't have time until just yesterday to go everything that was wrong with the girl.
So instead of starting a whole new post (even though its from like 2 months ago - I'll just update this.


Let me know what you think and what can still be improved on.

[Jad]

Woow, this is nice, mostly art-wise. Right now I feel this is mostly a digital painting with an indexed pallette; there's a lot more you can do with these colours. For starters I'd suggest unifying the contrast in the whole piece, seeing as the mushroom part and hair has a much deeper colour ramp than the skin (which is very nice anyways)

Anyways, stick around a bit, with this nice a start you can go very far (:

Also, girl is hot! (: Really digging the hip-y-ness (yeah, I know, everyone's already said that). Her upper torso feels a little wonkily thin, though. Umm. Yar.

Nice. 

[Willows]

Curse helm's anatomy paintovers! They destroy months of me telling myself I can eventually surpass helm in awesomeness!

Anyways, everything looks really flat. Contrast and outlines are the two biggest things NOT helping you with the flatness, and though normally I'd make an edit, I'm already two hours late for a class I hate, and am being an idiot by being on the computer at all.

Anyways! Hands seem a little large, especially for a girl, and her right forearm doesn't taper down near thin enough at the wrist.

I also think you lost a whole lot of the pouty-face straight hair droopy mushroom hat that was making her look sodamn cute somewhere between lineart and colouring, which is unfortunate. Her not having a lower half will always feel like a cop-out, too. Cut her off halfway through a joint or not at all, cutting her off at a point of rotation or twist or what have you is probably gonna "feel" wierd more often than not.

Yeh, love the character so far, I'll definitely be watching you from the shadows in the future :O

[Helm]

I really hope I do not ignite such emotions  Just trying to help 

xdjkittiex : It is quite pleasing, and I am in a happy position to say that your construction and color scheme and all these trad skill things are there, mostly, in this piece and what is left to do is apply PIXEL ART SKILLS which is mostly what we are about here (*Helm points at the header of this website).

So pixel art critique:

1. Your dithering is heavier than your solid colors. A no no! (give it some thought and you'll see why that might be so.)
2. Ultra separate palettes, straight ramps (you may search for 'straight ramps' in pixelation for loads of posts about that)
3. The contrast of the piece, as the wonderful Jad said, could be unified
4. Single pixels in the hair inner lines? Really don't work
5. Learn, and utilize, the grace and power of MANUAL ANTIALIASING


That's it for now! Keep it up!

[ptoing]

Coming along quite nice, but not quite finished.

It looks like the single pixels you have floating around in the whole thing are due to wonky gif saving. I think MSPaint does that. No clue what you used. Try saving as png.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Color and face edit. Also, reduced the color count to 20, plus transparency.



Contrast! Also, I don't think you need to be dithering this NEARLY as much. Some is perfectly fine, but the single pixel noise especially just doesn't work. Moreover, it seems unlikely that someone who (presumably) spends so much time outside would have such pale skin....

I don't mean to be harsh, but I liked the original concept design a lot better. With her tan skin and only wearing the loincloth and the mushroom cap, it looked like she belonged to a mystical society that is deeply integrated with nature. Now that the mushroom cap matches her 2-piece bathing suit ensemble, It seems like a silly costume. I do like the tattoo though; I think it is a nice addition. However, the seemingly pampered hair just pulls her further away from (at least my impression of) the original concept.

Not like the current design is bad at all; I just liked the original so much I thought it was worth noting.

[Zach]

her left hand is kinda wonky, it's not as delicate as her right

[Corinthian Baby]

Now that the contrast is increased you can see the dithering more clearly, where is was subtle before. It also makes it look like she has chicken pox now.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Now that the contrast is increased you can see the dithering more clearly, where is was subtle before. It also makes it look like she has chicken pox now.

Well poor contrast isn't a GOOD technique to simply cover up over-dithering. The single pixels just don't work.

[Lackey]

Actually it looks like the stray spots of dithering are a .gif saving artifact.  Are you using MSPaint or something by any chance, xdjkittiex? (is there a better way to say that?)



Anyway, I just wanted to demonstrate something here without altering the palette much.  Your shading seems a bit like you're trying to shade from the outlines and provide a little definition, but I don't think you're really considering the volumes!  So I did a rough paintover here just to show what I mean.  Having a light source should mean some areas are generally darker than others, not all within the same few values, if that makes sense.

[xdjkittiex]

Lackey - just call me kit or kittie don't worry about the x's lol
I am using MSPaint and saving with IrfanView - are there any programs that won't give the spots that you know of?  It would be greatly appreciated
Thank you for providing an edit - I'll take your points into consideration when I'm editing the girl.  Thank you

Zach -
Her left or our left?  What's wonky about it?  Let me know what exactly and I'll try to fix it

Helm -
Thanks for all of your suggestions and helping me work on my pixel art.  I've been in dolling for a long time now and am trying to break free of all the things I learned while in it.
I'll take all of your suggestions and see what I can come up with

Jad -
I'll work on the contrast

Thanks everyone for the suggestions - I'll fix everything as soon as I can

[Sherman Gill]

I recommend GraphicsGale: http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/ Configurable hotkeys and great palette control Just be sure to set the image to 256 color mode so that changes to the palette show up immediately.


Also, the current hips and lower abdomen are a little weird, they taper far too much as you go up, which makes her belly look a lot bigger than it should be, like she's got that malnourishment thing where your stomache bloats up, like in all the photos of starving African children.