Roman Shield Help

[Luke]

Okay so I'm trying to get back into pixeling. I'm kind of on a Roman theme right now, It would be my dream to someday make a pixel style, ancient Rome MMORPG.

Anyways I'm pretty rusty and I was wondering if you guys could give me some help with my shield.  I think I could use some more contrast, and I'm pretty disappointed with the metal piece in the center of the shield.   It would be great if someone could do a quick edit and show me what I'm doing wrong, that would help the most.

[adcrusher524]

Hey,
    I'm kind of a noob to pixel art, but i think i found a few things that needs improvement on you're shield. The dark shading on you're shield isn't dark enough, and the lights on it aren't bright enough. When you look at if from far away, it looks all like one shade. Also, when you shade dark, you should change you're hue into a colder color. When you're shading light, shift the hue to a more warm color. I only did an edit on one of the shields.

[Dusty]

Well I'm not very good at explaining things, so I thought I'd do an edit:


First thing I noticed is you had a lot of gradient going on with the shield itself. Then with the gold you outlined it with a very light shade, essentially making it look very pillow-shaded. You also have an extreme lack of highlights that something such as a shield needs to reflect its material. Contrast is also a good thing that this seems to lack. It's very hard to discern the shades of color, making it look very flat and dull.

AA is also very important to two contrasting colors -- this will stop colors like the gold and black from sticking out like a sore thumb against the red.

I wasn't sure of the perspective you were going for, the shape seems to imply a typical 3/4 view, but I may be wrong.