Bored

[Icarus]

Hey all, it's nice to join the community

I've joined up mostly because I want to improve my pixelling skills, so constructive criticism is handy.

This is my first portrait (most of my stuff is isometric rooms/items) and I'm pretty happy with it. I think I did the face pretty well, although I've had a hard time doing the hair and I feel it could be improved.

I actually just finished this; I spent about an hour (maybe an hour and a half?) on it and it was born through boredom, hence the title. Plus, the subject turned out to have a pretty bored expression on her face

[Xion]

Nice, for a first. From the looks of it, I assume you weren't going for anything super realistic.
Crits:
Her jaw is a bit too square for a girl. I mean, of course there are girls with man-jaws, but they're not too attractive.
The ears look a bit low. From my understanding, (Correct me if I'm wrong.) ears should go from the top of the eye to the bottom of the nose, positionwise. Generally speaking, of course.
Is one eyebrow up and the other down? It's hard to tell; the eyes are the same shape. The down eye should be a bit more flat on the top, and there should be a kind of meat above the nose. Em, that's not what I meant. It should be....furled?
Gah, whatever.
The eyes look pretty wierd. The glare is inconsistent with the rest of the image's lighting.
The lower cheek area looks very plain...Like a plane...all flat, see?
I don't know about you, but I don't generally frown disgruntledly when I'm bored. She looks like she's about to hurt someone.
Sorry, I can't really help you with the hair, but I can tell you that the gravity-defying bang looks wacky.

Oh, and...94 colors!?

[Icarus]

Thanks a lot for the detailed crit.

I'm not really that knowledgeable on anatomy, so I'll bear in mind the points about the nose, ears and eyes in the future. One of the eyebrows is supposed to be raised, and I mustn't have taken into account the eyelid - thanks for pointing it out. I guess I didn't away with changing the subject's sexuality halfway through - you noticed the chin xD

You're totally right about the eye glares, they're on the wrong side.

I didn't realised how many colours I used I'd just used a photo for flesh colour reference and was just picking colours from that. Also I didn't know lots of colours was a bad thing in pixel art?

[Helm]

I didn't realised how many colours I used I'd just used a photo for flesh colour reference and was just picking colours from that. Also I didn't know lots of colours was a bad thing in pixel art?

They're not if you don't think they are, but you'll get lots of people pointing it out in pixel art fora... when something can be done with 9 colours (as your portrait) doing it with 100 might be a bit overboard...

Pixel art is all about precise control. Fewer colours are easier to control, but more difficult to use to good effect. More colours are more difficult to control, but are easier to use to make well... colourful pics. There's a fine balance. You're far from it in this picture, which as I said can be done in 8-9 colours. For beginners, try to do this with 16 colours.