Monster Girl

[Pizza Tom]

Been a while since I did any pixel art, so I tried my hand at this girl, a character of a friend of mine. She was boring by herself, so I added some mushrooms, and may have gotten carried away..

I know the shading is wonky on some parts, but I fear I've been staring at it too long to pick out where. This is also my first real attempt at AA, and I think it worked out nicely. Admittedly, I'm pretty sure I over-AA'd parts of the girl... I'm not sure how to make the stitches on her eye look like stitches without adding all those shades.

I don't usually work with a set palette, which in this case resulted in way too many colors. Any help reducing that would be greatly appreciated.

[Mathias]

One thing - it's not clear what I'm supposed to look at, the girl and the shroom seem to share the limelight equally, like they're friends and it's a double portrait. Expand your canvas to the left and fill it in with the same. Girl has no shadow.

[Pizza Tom]

Tried taking your advice, Mathias.



The bg on the left seems a bit unbalanced though, still kinda WIP. I'm considering reducing the size of the mushroom to the right, as its shape is somehow really distracting. Also trying to think of ways to tie her into the environment, so she's not just slapped on there. Anything else need correcting badly?

Edit:

Changed the shape of the mushroom somewhat. I can't quite put my finger on what makes it stand out so much. I feel like it's really obvious too.  Maybe it'll be more clear in the morning. : P

[Emtch]

There's an awful lot of colors. Her legs are so thin and footless, I don't see how she can stand, and the arms look very short too  (but I know it's a cartoony style so I won't change it.)

I'm not very good at this, but here's an edit.


What I did in my edit:
Added contrast, and some volumes to make it look less flat.
Reduced the colors to 29, which is still alot.
Tried to fix some of the AA and banding, but I suck at that.
Tried to fix the focus more on the girl and less on the shrooms.

[Pizza Tom]

Yeah, the style was intentional. I managed to get the colors down to 28 26 here, though I'm sure I could push it farther. Her skin is supposed to be pale, by the way. I'm not sure where else I could get the colors down, unless I changed the mushrooms to be more similar in the back, but I kinda like the effect right now. :/ At the very least, I think I made the girl stand out a little bit more.

I'm really liking the way you put shine in the hair, Emtch. Hair shading still eludes me for the most part. My attempts all make it look less like shine and more like she has a blob on her head. Would you mind explaining how you do it?

[fucbillgates]

Try giving the girl more saturation then anything else.
And also try doing tiny hue shifts into warmer color
but only on her colors.

[Pizza Tom]

I had the color count down to 24, but desaturating the background made it go back up to 29. >.>

Still, I really like the effect it had. Now not only does she stand out more, the scene is much more eerie, which seems to suit her monster-ness.

[Dr D]

How did desaturating the background make the color count go up by 5? 

The face is a bit of a mess, maybe make the eyes more similar.

But I do like the improvement thus far.

[Pizza Tom]

The background and the girl shared a few colors, so when I changed the background the colors weren't the same anymore. She actually doesn't have a left eye, it's supposed to just be some stitches. I guess it didn't work though if you couldn't tell. Back to the drawing board.

Thanks for all the comments so far, everyone! 

[Arachne]

I think it needs a bit more space at the top and bottom as well, since it still looks a bit cramped. You can also make the mushrooms form a more dynamic pattern. Having everything line up like that makes it look static.

You also have some banding in there.

You can cut down on the colors quite a bit and still end up with a nice and smooth image by eliminating similar colors and constructing color ramps that can share colors for anti-aliasing. Try to replace a color with similar colors. If there's little change, you have one less color to worry about. You can also replace two similar colors with a mix of the two if the difference is too great.

For the anti-aliasing, you can try to pick a color that almost fits in between two others and then adjust it or the other colors so that it fits. It's easier if you keep the ramps visible in a part of the image so you can see how everything fits together. That way, you won't end up adjusting a color in one place and ruining the anti-aliasing elsewhere.

Also, whenever you have large areas of a single color, you can mix other colors in there to break up the monotony.



I circled the girl with mushrooms to make it a bit more obvious that she's the center of attention. I also made her turn slightly so that the pose is a bit less symmetrical and more interesting. I also ended up toning down the shadows on the mushrooms a bit and darkened the stems surrounding her to lower the contrast of the background and make her stand out more. I've used 18 colors.

Hope that'll give you some ideas.