Hey Cakster,
It seems to be coming along well. I made a few edits to help with what I feel are the main issues:
- Messed with colors to try and achieve more contrast
- Played with the mouth so it didn't look like a big black line across the face. If you're having trouble rendering the mouth, try and think about how light would hit each lip. With light above, the top lip will be in shadow, and the bottom lip will receive light, and because of the moisture will reflect it well.
- Changed the nose. Right now it looks like a snake nose, because there is little contrast around the nose to suggest it pops out, and the nostrils you drew are too prominent and slit like. I just put some pixels around it to suggest it's shape, and changed the highlight, and god rid of the very dark pixels at the nostrils. The color edit helped it a lot too.
- Altered your eyes. I do not feel I did a satisfactory job on the eyes, but perhaps you can see the problem with them and fix them. Yours seem a bit too small and beady. Also, you look very surprised because it appears the entire pupil is visible. The eyelid should cover part of it, for a neutral look. I think I made the eyes in this edit too dewy.
- Altered the eyebrows. Yours are of medium thickness, and slanted up towards the outside. The ones in yours seem a bit too thick and close together.
Hope some of this helps
