Portrait Practice

[mozzy]

Portrait of Atilus. Turned out way more feminine/Pit/childlike/ than I originally intended.

I HATE hair.

Crits pls (:

(View 2x)

[Dokozai]

Hmm it's ok now, I'll be back with an edit.

[mozzy]

Some crits would be nice (:

[Dokozai]

Some crits would be nice (:

Mine--->Yours
I'm not good with any anatomy though.

the only reason he looks a bit childish is because his face kind of round, and chubby.
AND HIS EYEBROWS ARE REAL BUSHY. Sorry, had to throw that out there.

And I just realized, mine looks a bit chubby too... Ugh.

[mozzy]

Done?

[Corinthian Baby]

Also dude, I dunno if it's a stylistic choice or not, but another major thing that make him look childish is those huge eyes. You can still have anime type eyes without them being so big, and also his nose looks like a kid's nose. Play with the nose a bit to until you get the feeling that he's a bit older than he looks now.

[Bag Man]

Try changing his nose, without trying to ofend, it looks like Michael Jackson nose.

Maybe using Dokozai's...

[mozzy]

Eyes smaller, different nose

[Shrike]

This is better, but if you want him to look older, like, in his 20's, you need much more defined shading around the face, and make the eyes more... human-like. But I don't know what sort of age you were going for. Maybe try something like this:


Hey, what do you know. He looks like a person. This is super-quick, but I think you get the idea. Much more defined, making him look older because he's less round. Experiment!

EDIT: I forgot to do this, but make sure to add some highlights to his hair, and extend the shadows on the hair. Also, I was pushed for time so I didn't touch his eyes. Look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAi7cHiaf-U <That.

Good luck, I love this piece so far.
Toodles!
Shrike

[HughSpectrum]

Face needs to be longer for that to work.  Now a large chunk of his right face was sawed off and almost has no chin.  It's not bad, just the size of the face needs to be adjusted for it to look right.

[Shrike]

That's true. Didn't notice that.  but... as I stated, I didn't have sufficient time to go through it. I would need to resize the canvas, redraw and stuff. It's really just a quick paintover. I'm only trying to get my point across. I hope it worked.

[donom]

I think for a more mature look the jaw needs to be more prominent, the eyes more oblique and the nose bigger. Also the structure of cheeks and well of the whole face should be less round.

I hope this helps.

[ndchristie]

donom has a great edit that I've saved in my archives.  I know this post contributes very little, but I feels that he accomplishes in a few lines what I intended to say here and that the best i can do is second the advice.

[mozzy]

Thanks for the crits guys.


I kind of want to keep the eyes in the same general shape (but they are a lot smaller than before), he needs to have some innocence to his look while not bieng overly childlike.

[Shrike]

donom has a great edit that I've saved in my archives.  I know this post contributes very little, but I feels that he accomplishes in a few lines what I intended to say here and that the best i can do is second the advice.

I agree.  I made a horrible, choppy edit while adding two colors, and Donom made exactly the look I was going for in the same style.  Well done, ignore my edit. 

New version looks loads better.  If I had to nitpick a few things it would be A) The hair. Really, try adding highlights to it.  It will greatly increase the depth, and give it some more form.  B) I think maybe a few very subtle shadows on the face would be good, in choice places. C) Right now the shading on the face, where the hair starts on the right, still looks blobular, which doesn't represent the curve you've added on the left of the face. Here, let me show you:

Better? I was using Paint, so the 2x pixels aren't exact, but you get what I'm saying.  Also, I didn't do this, but adding some subtle light highlights on the cheeks would give it more innocence.  If you don't want to add the subtle shadows. 
Really though, well done!

Toodles!
Shrike

[Jad]

oops, forgot to upsize. Oh wells.

I don't have a lot to say about this, so I'll let it speak more for itself. Err.

Mouth looks weirdly half-open, I closed it.

When doing low-detail styles, implying nose position by shading rather than linework works fine.

Added highlight on nose, it's the part of the face that points the most to the sky (the sun; the light)

Moved -> eyebrow <-wards, since .. err.. heads are shaped that way.

More neck for more mature look.

Ugly highlights in hair, disregard.

And that's it!

[Shrike]

Damnnit Jad, thats great.    Maybe I should stop editing.  Every time I do some awesome person comes along and does a way better one.

Just listen to Jad. 

[chimico]

my edit's so bad next to jad's one... oh well, i wanted to post it anyway.

i killed your character (sorry! ^^') 'cause i thought you could take some inspiration from the face's shape and give him some facial expression, and that would be pretty nice. to reach a more mature look, lines aren't very curvy, and eyes are smaller.
you did some great improvement, but keep improving 

[ndchristie]

chimco : it's a fine edit, but belongs more in something like cowboy bebop.
Jad's a a good medium between the original and donom's.

you'll never lose the kid look if you keep the mouth open that way.  it's somehow or another supposed to be an expression which more or less defines sweetness in a character (i.e. closeness to being a young girl), and though I don't know why I believe it.

[mozzy]

Thanks guys!
Also another character, he's a man that's cursed into slowly turning into a tree.

I've been meaning to add highlights to the hair, but I don't know how!

[Atnas]

I know your tree man shaves and everything to get his mustache the way it is, but it makes him look strangely baby faced to have the rest of his facial hair receding so much. I don't know, it might just be me. But if I were in your position I would not want to fall into the trap of making all my characters look very similar. And I would take every opportunity I could to put fluffy beards on people. :3

[ndchristie]

apologies for the dirty edit.

[Mike]

Thanks guys!
Also another character, he's a man that's cursed into slowly turning into a tree.

I've been meaning to add highlights to the hair, but I don't know how!

HAH I like that curse idea, thats hilarious and at the same time kinda sad.  Poor guy.

Anyway here is my edit.

I may have took a few too many liberties.



Using the halo is just one way of doing highlights for hair.

[Shrike]

Mike, that's a pretty good edit on the face, but the hair looks like its over-conditioned.  I think he's about done with that one anyway, but I don't know.

The tree guy is pretty good, but it looks like you just pasted a man's face onto a tree.  Try and add some root-like things spiderwebbing out onto his face, or have his skin look sort of brown towards the edges.  But still, I love this.  Good work! 

[mozzy]

Thanks for the crits guys (:
Especially the edit to the Treeman's beard ndchristie, that helped a lot.
Also, more interesting colors?

Also about the whole roots thing, I don't want to do that because it seems a little over the top, when you see his whole body, it will be much more apparent that he is a tree.
Btw, shrike, you saw the crits at tSR didn't you, because somebody said almost the exact same thing.

[Shrike]

Ooh, tasty.  Awesome new colors.   
No, I didn't.  What's tSR?

For tree-man, the eyes are the only things that got worse with the colors change.  Make them blue or red or something, so he doesn't look so much like his human counterpart on the left.  Good stuff though 

[mozzy]

tSR= the Spriter's Resource.

I'm having trouble with making the character's look different, I think it's mainly the eyes.
But they have to be hazel (or at least a similar shade of green) because I already made way to many sprites with hazel eyes to go back and change them all.

[Accident]

Perhaps you should give the guy some angry eyebrows. o:
The tree-man, I mean. He looks to me to be more... masculine?
You should try making his face look a bit older and hardened. Because, well, trees are usually old and they're hard. xD
They're also stubborn, which is why I'm suggesting some angry eyebrows.

[alkaline]

I like accident's idea of changing up the eyes on the second one. right now the facial expression is basically a copy of the first except with a downturned mouth. find a way to change the expression that's more fitting for the character.

[mozzy]

Changed his face up more, tried the "making it more tree like" thing.
I gave him thicker brows, but I don't want him to seem angry, he's very shy and quiet.

[Jad]

Look at a mirror and feel around a bit so you can feel the angles of your face.

I've realized that when you wanna make the jump from round-doll-like deformed manga cuteness to clean simplified-looking faces (like in, for example, death note and so) and which seems to be what you're aiming for here, you've got to make not proportions that ARE 100% realistic, but that FEEL realistic.

For example with your tree-guy, think about his chin, there's something off about it. I'd say it's the lack of space. In real life you if you go from the mouth and downward, you need space for a lower lip, then the skin part of your lower lip, and THEN the chin. right now the chin just merges into his mouth, which looks very plastic and doll-like.

same is with the mustache. Think of real people. The mustache grows on the (skin part of the) upper lip, if you want a real-looking mustache, you need to have a believable upper lip-space for the mustache to grow on. Right now that space is the space-between-nose-and-mouth-line, more or less undefined territory. I think this is hurting your faces, so construct them a little more carefully.

If you want him to look manlier, use your shades to imply a more formful nose, more defined lips (yes, lips doesn't make a man into a woman just like that) and some definition around his chin, so the whole thing looks a bit more realistic.

If you want him to still look kinda cute, then do this: You do what I said above but instead of defining the areas with shading you just change the proportions to make room for the parts of the face that are there! This is one of the secrets to stylize things in a believable manner; you keep good construction beneath the image, but you render only the important things, and as smoothly as possible. That way the brain will fill in the gaps with the parts of faces that it's got memorized, but still percieve the image as smooth.

Man I'm rambling, are you understanding my rant? If not, shout and I'll explain with images, way easier that way actually, but takes effort that I can't bring up right now since it's sleepytime!

Sorry for weird swede-english! Good night.

[mozzy]

I think I might have messed up with the lips.

But thanks, that's some great CC (:
Feel free to edit.

Your English is fine by the way.

[Jad]

Haha, late night, I didn't really trust my english skillz.



Edit!

Construction is a bit weak and 2-dimensional! Guy looks a bit flattened, and his face drags to the -> side! I experimented with adding tree-y things to his face but it looks like poop. Oops! : D



This might give some insight as to how I think, construction-wise. It's important to get this into your head, and if it's there, nourish and cultivate it, so there you go! Symmetry in faces is a good thing, generally, and trying to skew it in 3d space in a believable way. I am in no way very good at this, but actively thinking about construction and trying to make sense of the 3d within the 2d still improves my art, and so will it yours! Good luck!

Edit: Oh, and the all-colours-everywhere principle will help tremendously here seeing as the tree is the man and the man is the tree! Throw all shades in everywhere to get the best results!