Royal puppet guy.

[peculiarapparat]

My best work so far.

c&c?

[pokoto]

I like the shading very much. Nothing about the design strikes me as being bad. The contrast is pretty low, so if he is an important element of a scene or a main character I would make him more attention grabbing in that respect. Technically, I think the cape and bottom of the shirt are way too thick and stiff to look like cloth at all. There would be no reason for the end of the cape to flip up like that unless it were something that kept shape, like thick, really thick, leather. If you added more folds and drapes, it would be more cloth-like. Also, I have no idea why his leg is up in that position. Is he going to be kneeling on something?

[peculiarapparat]

Ok, highening contrast worked wonders; also fixed the cape thickness (thicker materials look cooler, but yeah i suppose it makes no sense here). Folds might look good, but i dont see good places to put them. The leg is like that because he is walking sneakily to stab someone. & the cape is "hovering" because the sword was meant to keep it up.

[Gil]

Edit of the eyes mainly. You need more edge detail like I dd with the eyes

[Mathias]

wow major contrast improvement. dont you hate it when you stare at something for hours and completely miss obvious global flaws? I know I dew

Ok now, so what the crap is this thing? A puppet? How is it a puppet? I see no marionette strings or rig, etc. Why the pointy feet? They're my least liked thing.  The head looks like a guy with a burlap sack over his head, just what it evokes to me. He appears to be dropping the sword, his grip on looks very weak/awkward.
Oh wait a minute, is this a 'Devil May Cry' puppet enemy? Your op fails to include any useful info, so I now have to ask - is this design all original  -OR-  is it based on anything?, if so post reference so we know what you're trying to acheive. This makes a difference in the crit.

Thought about minimizing the dithering usage? It's well-done and emulates a nice grittiness, but I still think it may be detracting from the overall polish.

Why not a neck guard peice for the cloak/cape?


More folds in the clothing? Maybe this thread would be helpful, some fresh info.

[wah_wah_69]

You can reduce the number of colours of your palette to 16, and I bet you could pull a reduction to 8 as there're a lot of similar colours.



Here's the output from the gimp after doing a reduction from 16 to 8 colours:

[Gil]

The poster didn't mention anywhere he was working with a limited palette. I don't see how the 8 colour version helps. It looks way worse and I thought the 16 colour palette was pretty unified already, with no real "wasted" colours.

[peculiarapparat]

(introduced neckguardlike thing (imo genuine neckguards look silly), merged a few similar color tones, made it more obvious that the sword is being held by some leather strap instead of right hand)

@Gil, right about the eyes

@Mathias, its not based on anything; just a puppet-like humanoid with simple geometric shapes instead of human musculature, so i wouldnt have to get to human anatomy at this point. But uh i like dithering, any remotely round object cannot look very round without dithering imo? & i really like the pointy legs as well.

@wah_wah_69, i dont have any palette limitations, and your 8 color edit (or any edit that makes there be less than 16 colors here imo) does lose some (valuable) information.

[st0ven]

So i just made some quick suggestive edits here for you. I was thinking that you look like youre trying to really use dithering to give your character form and structure here. I say, before you even think about doing a dither, first make sure that your form , lighting and depth are solid.

Your character is interesting and i like the colors used overall. I really think that there is something rather flat when you look at him, and i think this mainly derives from the fact that there isnt really any great emphasis on capturing any of the subtle (or even the dramatic) cloth folding that might happen with a character so heavily clothed as this one.

Without really bothering with dithering or detail or even clean up, i scribbled in some form with the cloth and other general details to give you perhaps a spark of intuition as to how to proceed with your next pieces. Your technique seems good, but it seems to supercede the basic premise of form and shape which is what is primarily the most important aspect of just about any imagery.

from there, if you feel that some colors could be more elegantly blended with each other, use a dither solution to achieve this effect.

forgive me for the brevity of time spent on editing, i dont think i need to really finish it out for you moreso than to just demonstrate the basic premise of what im trying to portray.

[eobet]

That edit is one of the more impressive ones I've seen on this forum so far.

The character went from being rather basic and cartoonish, to having realistic volumes, realistic light and realistic materials all at once!

Superb.

His left hand is still a bit undefined, though, and the length of the knife handle and its angle looks wonky.