D~Dawg's Pixels (Ribbs, Swords)

[D~Dawg]

D~Dawg's first post, boo-yah!

I'm new to this website, but not-so-new to pixeling. (Like alot of people here, I see...)

You can be as harsh as you want to this N00B. But seriously, I don't care. Say whatever you like. I might not always agree, though.

here's the project, a frog named Ribbs:



This is the best work I've done in years! (sarcasm)
Anyway, how would you go about shading this? I tried every possible way and it turned out looking like someone splashed paint on him. Do you think AA would work for this peice? And do you think dithering might help my shading problem?

Here's how I made him...I took a picture of a little knick-knack I have, and outlined (in red) his main parts. Then I cleaned up the 'realism'. Next, I traced the red outline, with blue just to fix jaggys and stuff like that. Then I filled him in with my own colors.

Oh, and, transparency is coming soon.

[~*McMuffn*~]

you need to fix the shading on his back leg.

[D~Dawg]

(Your talking about squivel, right?)
Why, what's wrong about it?

That reminds me:
If you have something to say, please tell me which peice you're talking about.

[infinity+1]

quick 10-mins-before-work edit

[D~Dawg]

Well, that's great, but...This looks nothing like my character. (no offense)
Thanks anyway, though.

And I'll try to learn from what your doing.
 

[infinity+1]

oops. should have read the description. i was just going off what i saw in the pixel art.

[D~Dawg]

Would it be absolutely okay to change this thread to just Ribbs?

Update for Ribbs:


To dither...Or not to dither? That is the question.

[Jad]

Answer: No! It's too messy to work with right now! I'd say if you want to get a better 3dimensional feeling, let the bands of shading extend farther than just the bottom.

Work with that until you've got the shading where you want, then dither for smoothness. It's a tried concepts, known to work very well! Good luck.

[D~Dawg]

okay...
You're saying I shouldn't dither right now? Alright, whatever.
I'll bring out the shading WAY more, and take away the dithering. Thanks alot.
And I was thinking about putting the shade up just a little below his mouth. Too much, or what?

PS: love your avatar!

[Mush]

Right now the Ribbs looks like a disk. To make him look less flat shade his body as if it were a sphere, like this:

[D~Dawg]

Righto, pal.

how many colors do you recomend using? Right now I'm using 5. To much, or to less?

[~*McMuffn*~]

i think that retarded is a very good name for this! im just playin with you, but you definately need to hold off on the dithering until it looks a little better.


p.s. you didnt know i could spell accual(i dont think that is how you spell that though, XD) words did ya?
p.p.s. shouldn't you include auto traider it your signature??
p.p.p.s. Jad i love your avatar!! =]

[D~Dawg]

Sorry for not posting in a while, but I was just hangin' out in the other threads.
Anyways, I found the solotion to my problems! all I had to do is make him smaller.
So I shrunk him down, re-outlined him, shaded, and here it is:

now we can get started for REALZ! WOO.
I haven't lighted yet, and I haven't removed the black outlines, but this is looking WAY better, don't you agree?
EDIT: changed the thread to Ribbs.

[JosephSeraph]

I go aganist using black for anything except outlines. Even worse when it's true black [0,0,0]. i use [32,32,32]  for outlines, only :/

Also, i recommend changing more the hue between the shades, and making them more variant on the light source. Also, i recommend starting fresh and new, and showing us the outline, because there are some things strange... Odd. Like the eliptical shape based eyes.

That'a what i think...

[D~Dawg]

I haven't removed the black outlines

I work on that later, I just now redid him.

is this what you meant?

Also, i recommend changing more the hue between the shades, and making them more variant on the light source.

Could you give me an example of what you mean, please?

[fucbillgates]

Here i did a quick edit to show you some hue shifting.



Notice how the lighter colors are more yellow and the darker colors are more blue.
But not toooo yellow or toooooo blue.

[D~Dawg]

Yes, that's what I thought "hue" meant but I wasn't sure...
How's this?

EPIC, huh?




...

[D~Dawg]

Just a robot thing:


It's supposed to be a robot's head. The orange-red part is his eye, the bump in the middle is his nose, and he's not really supposed to have a mouth, but it looks like he does.

Whattaya' think?

[Atnas]

Well, technically it's a lot better than your previous work, however it kinda lacks as far as design is concerned. You had to explain to us what each part is, but the image itself should tell us that.

Right now, the bolts to either side of the orange strip looks like the eyes. the familiar 'two aligned circles near the top of a shape are eyes' is impossible to get around - unless! you can repeat the shape in question throughout the design.

It looks more like a stack of objects rather than one object because you don't apply the shading found consistently throughout the rest of the image to the mother rectangular prism which everything is attached to.

[D~Dawg]

I know... This really sucks! I think I know how to fix it. I'll just connect the squares, make a mouth, and make the eye bigger. And I'll clean up the edges, which REALLY set this peice off.

EDIT: update:


Big change.

[Sm.]

You got the idea, but still have a little work to do  .

Let me start with two points...




1) Very minor, but notice how his back leg ie exposed to lightsource when that can't really logically happen. Probably should leave that back leg dark.

2) Secondly, you are still doing some... maybe instinctive pillowshading throwback. Notice how the eyes are shaded where they look unrealistic and cheesy, and also how the brightest color is outlining ribs' head instead of being a part of it. See how fucbillgates captures more of the spherical dynamics?

On another note, the colors are definately improving, but you should keep improving them as they still are a little lackluster and low in contrast.

There's my cliche amount of cents.

[~*McMuffn*~]

sorry buddy, but i cant tell how thats a face.

[Dyble]

Try shrinking the big greyish "nose"

[D~Dawg]

Here's a sword:

So, I wanted some AA-lineart practice, and I started making a lightsaber. But as soon as I made the handle for it, I turned it into a sword.
This is my first lineart, and it looks pretty decent to me.

I was gonna stick this in the lineart thread, but I thought it wasn't worth it.



I think the shadow should actually resemble the sword... heheh.
 

[D~Dawg]

what I did:
changed the shading
fixed the eyes
removed shading on back leg

 

[D~Dawg]

Hi, Dyble!

Yeah, I added a little too much detail on the nose and it made it look huge.

oh, and scracth what I said about it being my avatar. The swrod SHALL be my avatar

//edit ptoing: stop making so many threads if you have lots of wip stuff going.

[Cure]

so
like
Are you going to fix this robot thing? What is the purpose of advertising a completely separate work in this thread?
Why do you have multiple threads for quick doodles? Why not make a single thread so as not to clutter the main page?

Right now this robot is rather abstract. I honestly cannot tell what I'm looking at. If it is supposed to look like a face, then make sure it corresponds with human anatomy enough to be perceived as a face.
I currently see a square inside a square on top of orange stuff.

seems ptoing addressed your clutter problem before I could. What swift and observant mods!

[gandhi420]

look at these two side by side. see how fucbillgates version looks round? when you only highlight and shade the edges of the frog it looks flat like a disk. try to think about volumes when you're shading. also, your palette also doesn't have enough contrast between colors, they're blending together.

[D~Dawg]

I know'd I'd be asking for alot, but can one of you mods combine all my threads into one post?

[Atnas]

Even the CommanderD ones?

As far as the robot head goes, there's not much even pointing to it's status as a robot. It looks more like a megaman energy capsule. Machines are functional, each part has a purpose, and your robot looks more like a storage unit. If a machine has eyes, that means it has a way of receiving visual input, if it doesn't it probably means it is blind or takes aural input. These things go into the design. Because robots can be created and designed by humans, they often share a lot of similarities because of sentimental value and it's what is known to work. To draw something you must understand it. Also, a robot head doesn't necessarily have to look like a head to be understood as a head if you place it upon a body where the head is found. Even if it's just shoulders you add, it could really help this come across as a head and not a <3 mini fridge <3

On a pixel level, you are not economic. You would do well to make better use of each pixel, each color slot. If smooth gradients are found in a palette such as your frog one, it could mean that there is some badass gradated rendering, but a lot of the time it just means unnecessary blur. The digital artist is always fighting blur, at least I am, anyway. In digital painting I find to get nice lines I'll have to sharpen either manually or with a filter, in pixel art I get it by being more economic and having smart pixel placements and a palette with appropriate contrast.

On a general art level, I think what will help your rendering the most will be to consider everything as a separate object, not just THIS IS FROG, but THIS IS A SERIES OF 3D SHAPES. Shade each part of the frog, break it up into spheres cylinders, rectangular prisms etc. It will come as second nature in time, and you will learn how to render objects under a variety of lighting conditions and from any angle. You don't even have to look at that edit you were given, look at your own hand. Look at the way the light falls. It's darker in some places, and lighter in some, because of where the light reaches and can not reach. The light bounces around the room, the light will reflect off smoother surfaces, it all has to do with light. Once you understand light, you will be able to render efficiently. If you do not, you will fail very often.

[Gil]

Seeing all of these, all I can say is, go back to your basics. Start working with paper and pencil and try getting better at your basic art skills. The way you shade right now, you'll never end up with something satisfactory volume-wise. You need the basics really.

I suggest drawing from life, or something e-based, like posemaniacs' 30 second drawings method

[D~Dawg]

Even the CommanderD ones?

Darn you!  How'd you know it was me?

Seeing all of these, all I can say is, go back to your basics. Start working with paper and pencil and try getting better at your basic art skills. The way you shade right now, you'll never end up with something satisfactory volume-wise. You need the basics really.

I suggest drawing from life, or something e-based, like posemaniacs' 30 second drawings method

Shading, shading, shading... I'll work on it. >>notice how I didn't get mad this time! <<
And you're probably thinking I'm ignoring what you said about pencil and paper, but I'm not.

[Scribblette]

It sounded like you, but it sounded better.

Very nice work on the frog outline compared to your previous work.

Besides sketching this and then doing the volumes by shading with a pencil, which you should totally do, there's another way to practice this:

Try one dark colour outline (black is fine for this practice), and two colours (one light, and one dark) for the inside. Greys are fine. You can use more colours later for more practice, but for now these three should be enough.

This way you can just define the volumes - you can practice how the light works. If you understand how lighting works (or want practice), you should be able to do (or try) this.

Look at the other frog shown to you there, compare it to yours. His looks like a solid object, with bright light catching above the lip, on the protruding chin, and then shadows where no light falls at all. Your frog, no offense looks like he is absorbing light most of the way through his body, somehow. He's not just one ball - he's a bundle of 3d shapes mushed together, as said above. Shading this all in with pencil is the practice people have been talking about.

Still, I think you're improving when it comes to doing the overall shape.

[~*McMuffn*~]

Aw man, they caught ya!! i told you it couldn't last! :p
Your sword looks really good, but i think it needs to be longer. And your avatar, he looks like he could use some shading. And whats up with the man-boobs, dude??

[D~Dawg]

Your frog, no offense looks like he is absorbing light most of the way through his body, somehow.

that was funny. And, yeah, someone else said to make it black and white before, right? I really thought that helped when I did it last time. Oh, and you put 3 "" smileys in that post...

The robot is gone now. No mo' robo. Robot's outta here! No more robot.

Here's a little thing I did with Ribbs (sorry for bad quality)
>>
>>


And swords update: changed the old one and made a new one.



The new one kinda looks like a cow utter...