[Wip] Skull monster C+C

[Phones]

I'm starting to try out spriting a bit bigger (a large challenge for me), so...I made this guy! I'm decently happy with him, though it overall lacks that pro touch. I know it has a lot to do with the edges and shading, but I can't put my finger on how to fix it. If you could critique this with all you have, that'd be fantastic. Thanks.
__________________________________________________


v1
__________                         


v2
__________   


v3

__________   



v4


Quick concept

[Azgardes]

It might just be my eyes, and being tired, but I can't really tell what that is.

[Phones]

Oh. That's not a very good sign. I'll update with a quick picture.

[st0ven]

im interested to learn your process of creating this piece before going into any detailed comments - was this something that was touched and cleaned after some shrinking of the reference image? was it reinterpreted from scratch?

I also refrained from commenting even earlier because i was also rather confused over the design of it. i could tell it was a mask and a figure naturally but i couldnt really tell what was going on - now i can see the intent of showing veins and the details of the mask and 'face' (the part that isnt covered by the mask is the hardest thing to distinguish).

[Phones]

It was a picture reinterpreted from scratch. I shrunk some parts of it down to look at the anti-aliasing, but that's all.

[Squiggly_P]

I didn't do an edit of the sprite, I did a paintover of your drawing.

I think a lot of the problem stems from the lack of structure going on.  I just picked one light source and did a quick shading pass over a trace of your line art (and I see I screwed up a couple of shadows, but meh...)  In your painting and in your sprite you have some serious pillowshading going on.  The edges of all the shapes get shaded and the center of the areas all get lighter and lighter.

This flattens out the whole thing, but more than that, it makes the actual structure of the object pretty hard to figure out.  I just guessed at a lot of the upper structure, because I had a hard time reconciling the overall form of the head and the way the skull-mask thing attaches to it.  The goal of this was basically to point out the pillowshading and hopefully show you why the sprite was hard to figure out.

I'd suggest getting the basic shape of the sprite down and figure out how to shade it, and then worry about the details like the veins and surface texture and stuff.  The veins add a lot of noise to the shape right now, and they're not really placed in any sort of logical way, so they probably add to the confusion.  You can tell what they are in the larger drawing, but in the sprite they could be veins or scars or a texture or some sort of indication of the sort of material it's supposed to be...

But I'm more a painting/drawing sort of person.  I don't have a lot of pixelling experience, but the good thing about drawing is that you can translate the same basic skills into pixels.  I think the one thing you can pull out of this particular critique is to work on your overall 2D drawing / painting stuff as well as your pixel stuff, because I think you could stand to learn a lot about form and shading.

// EDIT // Added a better version of the paintover.  I forgot the bulge for some reason and it threw me off.  Crit remains the same.
// Edit 2 // http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/Squiggly_P/Paintovers/mcp_quick_shade2.png slightly cleaner / better shading, but it sorta strays from your concept a little I think, so I linked it instead...

[Phones]

No no no, that's actually just what I was going for. Very nice.
I redid the shading just now, so before I add anything else, I want to make sure people can actually tell what it is.

I see the crazy amounts of pillow shading I had now. I think it's recognizable now, but even if it's not, it still looks much better.
Is there anything I could improve upon with it before going any further?

[alspal]

Hope someone doesn't mind me asking, but would the above sprite be a good example of banding?

[Elrinth]

It reminds me of the monsters in the anime series Bleach or the monster in Spirited Away:

The neck part looks very unconvincing compared to the nice art piece.
The hair looks like it's merged with the mask.
That bump on the nose in the artwork is gone which kinda gave it nice characteristics.
The tail was separated in a more convincing way in the v1.
Since it's a mask, put some nice shading on it just like you have in the artwork. IE highlights.


Keep up the good work. You've got talent definatly!

[Phones]

Thanks. And I wouldn't be surprised if it does. I love studio Studio Ghibli stuff.
Anyway, I did as you suggested, but yet, it still lacks something. Admittedly it still isn't TOTALLY complete, but I don't it's anything significant.

Here it is. Thanks for all your help so far everyone. You people are awesome at critique.
Speaking of which, where do I turn from here?