[WIP] Arceus the Lord (updated)

[Corinthian Baby]

Yo whatup, I'm making Arceus, the pokemon God, and I'm looking for critiques and advise. I need help on coming up with a background, making the smoke less static, and most importantly, how to make the dude's antatomy look correct as. Also any tips on shading and light sources.

The sprites to the right are from the actual pokemon game that I'm obiously using as refrence.

Here is my other ref for the pose:

I'm trying to capture the movement of the majestic creature.

[tocky]

mostly just volumes:
-neck gets awful thin near the head
-tails thin out too early
-added a bunch of sharp angles to the legs. I don't know if you want that exactly, and i don't know anything at all about ungulate anatomy, but it might help with majesty, he's all a bit too wavy at the moment.
-needs more husky hair (like on the head) - all over the place, i think. most of the shape to the original sprite is hair.

[Corinthian Baby]

Thanks man, working off your edit/ideas:

[tocky]

Doing well - but don't kick off from an edit, adjust your original to try to get the same effect. You learn more about what was changed, that way.

[Corinthian Baby]

Yeah wasn't sure about that, I'll def do it in the future.

Edit: Update:

Almost complete version, but I have a question for you guys. Is the shading of his body overdone a bit? Should I tone it down so he doesn't look so messy? Basically how the texture works. Also, any suggestions on how the approach the thing on his back?

[Corinthian Baby]

I'm finally coming back to this to finish it up. I added the gate things on his back and an outline for the bg. I want it to be him pulling space with each step:

And I was also wondering if my colors are good or how/which ones should be changed. Also any suggestions for the bg as well.

[lollige]

I believe that the color of the 'wood?' and the hoes could be more shiny gold, like in the originals.

Also, the piece of hair above his left fore leg (on the right side of it) is a bit messy, and the light stripe on the tail looks very weird and unrealistic.

This grey is maybe how he is, but its a bit boring. If you are going for a blue background, how about going for a tiny bit of yellowish in his fur? However this would not be too good because of the thing build around him: its yellowish too. So how about a green background maybe? Flying above or running in one? Than you could do a slightly purpleish creature
Just slightly, so it does not look so grey.

Thats my suggestions about the colors

[Corinthian Baby]

The blue was gonna be transparent, but I'll look into the opposite complimentary color system you described. In the meantime, I know the things on his back are not supposed to be wood. To me, it doesn't look like wood, but I would like to know how to make the texture different to match the gold kind of substance of the original sprite.

[lollige]

Well, smooth things out!

Most of the inner lines of those things are very very jaggy! While if they would be made out of gold, they would be very very smooth!

Also get it more yellowish (search for golden items in the pixeljoint gallery as soon as it is online again).

Your colors are overall a bit of a mess I see now. I wanted to make an edit, but its too messy to make something good of it quickly..

Take down that color count. Remove the green and the red for now, you can add it lateron again if its really needed. Or make the gems very green too. But I cut out the creature and there were 28 colors!

How about 8 colors for the hair (max) and than 5 colors for the gold, where you can combine the bright and the dark colors of the hair again with the gold ramp?

Get your palette a bit more neat

[Corinthian Baby]

Here is an update, I changed the pallet on the gate thing to 5 shades like you said. The fur is almost 8 colors, but I didn't change any actual colors on the fur. I got rid of the green and red. I also tried to make it look like gold, nice and smooth.

Also I think the smoke is too static, but I will address that when I get to the bg.

[Redshrike]

Gold is a shiny metal; a gold pallette should have a fair deal of contrast.  Look at some pictures( say, here or here.

[skamocore]

I'm really like what you've done with the fur around the neck But overall, this piece just isn't improving that much...

Sloppy NPA edit:



*It looks really flat, you really need to define the volume of the creature a bit more. Remember this is a creature with a solid body, it (presumably) has muscles and bones etc... I think one problem could be your reference image of the deer...look at some actual photos of deer and other similar animals. Better yet, go to a zoo and take a good look at some deer and do some sketches!

*Ditch the background for now. Focus on the creature. Also it is best to work on a more neutral background colour. Your current background is better than what you had before, though.

*Where is your lightsource? Things seem to be lit from all different angles. For example look at the front left foot, it seems to be lit from the bottom...

*The size of your image is huuuge, I know, for whatever reason you've decided to make it this particular size, but in pixelart something like this is massive. It gets really hard to work on something at this scale. It's kind of unreasonable to suggest you restart this again at a smaller size, so this is really more advice for the future than critique for this specific piece...

*I think there still needs to be greater contrast. At the moment it seems a bit washed out. Maybe not as much contrast as in my piece, but I think it still needs a fair bit more. Also pay attention to the gold texture, and make sure you study Redshrike's images.

*Also, there seems to be a bit of banding happening in the 'gold' sections.

[Corinthian Baby]

Thanks man, this is really helpful. I will be making this for awhile man. The reason why it's so big, I started with the face, and got carried away. But I need to do something crazy so what better than Arceus. I thought I had the light source all squared away, in that it was coming from the left hand side of him, but I can see on your edit how it should be. I guess I will be painting over his fur yet again.

Just one thing to clear up, what do you mean by banding?

OK here's a quick paint over. I tried to follow your model. Changed the pallete, though the color change is not complete, the new pallet will have 18 colors. (17+1)

Started details on the face, and also combined some of the colors for the golden arch on his back.

[Corinthian Baby]

Here is an update I cleaned up his little face and coloured his neck for the most part:

[Raytheon]

dont constrict yourself to those lines make bits of fur stick out in places

[Corinthian Baby]

No doubt man:

[Corinthian Baby]

update:

[tehwexxl0rz]

All the fur sticking up on its back make it seem a lot less sleek and elegant and more wild/dirty.

Also I think the fur would look more fur-like if you broke up the long lines a bit. The contrast between the streaks of fur looks sort of odd....

[Corinthian Baby]

I digg man. I'm gettin closer to finishing the figure. I feel something is off a bit so hit me with your best crits:


Started a sketch of the bg:


bg wip:

with creature:

[Corinthian Baby]

Anything to change before I submit?

[Tuna Unleashed]

The shading on the gold and the reflection both look messy. For the gold I would suggest making it less jagged and for the reflection I would make it use more consistent colours.

[Corinthian Baby]

Yeah that floor was a rushed sketch. I finally went into it and set in the colors and the reflections. Tried to make it look more solid, and reflective:

Anything to change or fix before I submit?

[Draco9898]

The reflection on the bottom off the floor is making very little sense to my eyes