First post and pixels

[Tremulant]

Hey everybody. Seeing as this is my first post, I suppose a bit of an introduction is in order. So let's see... my name's Kevin, I'm from Canada, and I've been lurking here for quite a while, intimidated by the overwhelming sexiness of everyone else's stuff.... but, I like to pixel, and I figure I can't get any better without crits, so I finally decided to suck it up and post some stuff. So, here we go:




These are just a few pieces I've done in the past little while... not the best, I know, but gotta start somewhere, right? Tell me what you think

[Lick]

NICE! I really like the colors and the darker lines you used to shape the characters. Funny pieces, too.

Welcome to Pixelopolis (I almost typed Pixelation..)! Enjoy your stay and make us enjoy it too!

[Silver]

welcome 
you got some good skills, have no cirts in fact
but good luck .

[Helm]

I think they're very good. What you could try to do is not only shade down from the starting shade, but also do highlights. For example on the gnome, an extra shade to lighten up the seams where they'd pick up specular highlights from the lightsource, reflective highlights on the face, that sort of thing.

You're wasting your dark shades on almost all of these, I see duplicates of black  and close-to-black first darkest shades in your colour ramps.

Also you could throw a bit of tinting in on the shading, to make it more interesting.

I really love the AA around the hair on the cedric sprite, good work.

[Tremulant]

Thanks guys! I got a way better reception on these than I thought I would . Shoulda started posting sooner...

Helm- I was going to add highlights (on the gnome in particular) but I was trying to keep the colour count down. Like you pointed out tho, there're a lot of wasted shades, so I'll have to do some tweaking there. As for tinting, I love it when it's done well. I don't really have a good grasp on how to go about it (properly) though, so any advice would be much appreciated.

Edit:
Just updated the leprechaun a bit. Mainly added some highlights...

[Helm]

Tremulant, colour conservation, palette unification. Tints are easy if you try to unite the disparate shades. This is predominantly green and brown, right? What's between them in the colour wheel, both ways. Make 'pit-stops' when you need them in the chain from A to B. Study the 15 colour palette I made for this a bit.

[Tremulant]

Haha wow... I saw your edit and found it hard to believe they were the same piece.
I made some major changes based on your advice:

Now, let's see if I've got this straight. The highlight on the clothing is a mid-tone between the green and orange, and the skin stayed pretty much the same, excpet for the more reddish dark tone, which I'm still a bit confused about. Is that just poersonal choice, or is it like someweher between the hair and the skin-tone? It looks phenomenal, but I don't really understand the 'why' of it. I also didn't get the grrenish blue choice for the clothes' dark, but then I saw that the belt was bluish, so I assume it's a mid tone between the two? Using the mid-tones and whatnot, I got the pallet down to a lean 14 colours and a transparency. Not to mention the fact that it looks soo much better now!
Great advice man. I really appreciate the help

[Dhaos]

Tremulant, lovely pixels, the topmost image looks like a leprachaun from hell *shivers* Also your edits show good improvement. Seems your catching onto the Helm's highlight advice;, adds a nice touch to any image. You might consider highlighting the cane and belt (more or less adding a shine or glare to it, being that everything else has highlights anyways).

As for your other images:

The mushroom head dude rocks, its hilarious to look at. Nice smooth cartoon details. He should probably eat less soap though, tis bad for his health it is!



The Cedric is well made, quite realistic, but I believe there is room for some optimization and lighting corrections:
-dark tones too close together in color (contrasted them)
-a few lighter skin tones were also very close so I contrasted them
-many of your hues didn't follow a good saturation flow (as colors get lighter or darker their saturation shifts slightly aka goes up or down, but they all must go up or down; there are rare exceptions when dealing with unusual lighting however)
-some shadows weren't dark enough so I darkened them
*ex:under the neck for example
-added hair detail near the face itself
-added minor AA to the shirt and necklace
-made his necklace shinier (I think thats gold on the end?)

After editing I still don't like my neck edit alot, somethings just off I suppose. Anyways hope you find this useful.

[Tremulant]

Thanks for the advice, Dhaos I see what you meant about the pallette, and it really shows in your edit (everything looks alot softer and more natural).
As far as the neck goes, that's my fault. Looking at the picture I referenced, it should be thicker, and his face should be a bit wider. As it stands, I think it looks funny 'cause its too thin for its length. The (lack of) detailing around the face has to do w/ the refernc pic too... his hair's like a solid block in it, as you can see:


But, as you can probably also see, my pixels don't look much like the real thing at all.
I think part of the problem with this one was that I got frustrated at the lack of resemblance and gave up...

[Helm]

-many of your hues didn't follow a good saturation flow (as colors get lighter or darker their saturation shifts slightly aka goes up or down, but they all must go up or down; there are rare exceptions when dealing with unusual lighting however)

This is advice that doesn't really always apply to pixel art pieces. For example the greenest shade on the belt on my edit is 100% saturation, which is like heh 90% jump from the shade before it. This is a nice trick to give the piece a general 'tint': sometimes I up the saturation of the last shade whereas there's absolutely no theoretical explanation for it, so it goes trasparency - pure black - strong establishing theme colour - and the rest of the regular shades.

I guess we will discuss this more in the colour theory thread, one i gather up the courage to post.