Namesake

[Jakten]

I recently posted this character picture in the creativity thread:


A redesign of an old Norwegian adventurer character I created many years ago when I played Final fantasy 1. Essentially this guy evolved from Fighter. I had characters created for my entire party but the only ones I cared for years later were Jakten and my black mage and a troll named Mørk who didn't have a FF counter part.

Anyways onto the point. I don't want my pixelling skills to get rusty so I decided to pixel my new design and this is what I came up with.



I'm mostly concerned with readability issues. I'm a bit worried I tried to cram too much detail into a small area. All critique is welcomed though 

[newsomjk]

The middle of the sword looks broken and the two little tufts of hair that stick up in the back are too thick, makes it look like a bun almost.

I like the body of it though, nice job =)

[Chis]

I like the design of his hair and boots 

The hand holding the sword looks crooked and tense, as if he were just punching the hilt instead of holding it.
His chest is a little confusing; I can't tell his right hand apart from his belt. Maybe you can also take out a few stripes out from the vest design?
I think his chest also needs to be more 3-dimensional. That might make the design more realistic.

[Jad]

He's suffering a bit from low-contrast, and from light and shadow not sharing any characteristics. Decide on a color that will tint all shadow colors and a color that will tint all the brighter hues, and then go with that. Maybe things in the light are more yellow and warm and shadow is blue? shadow is gray? You know. Stuff like that helps a piece look less like a plastic doll and more like something large existing in an actual environment

[Tobe]

wao, I certainly love the design and styling ... but perhaps not so much of the colors though, hehe.
Then again, the colors looks nice on the pixel art, but I thought the pixel styling should look more similar to the original artwork. The current version looks something from FFTactics, and doesn't do justice to your drawing. Not that it's not nice though. Just that I'm too in love with the original 

[circuscommando]

the hair looks a bit like a hat in the sprite.

[CrazyMLC]

I really like the design but it needs to be shinier. Can't go wrong with shiny.

[Jad]

But hair still needs more brightness, more contrast, more delicious

Boots need more brightness.

Or he'd have to reside in an even MORE subdued environment, which I don't really feel, seeing how his design is sorta fantastical and ridiculous (in the best of ways, also not nearly as ridiculous as things can get. I'm actually just using the word ridiculous cause I suck at english)

[Doodad]

you have a nice perspective except for the feet, which look fairly straight-on - especially his back foot.  that leg is, to my eye, too long and is contributing to the flat, straight-on feel.  the hands are pretty unclear as to what's going on and i think CrazyMLC's edit helps to clarify his sword-holding hand though i am still a little lost on his other one.  the contrast on his shirt where the white meets the yellow ochre-ish color seemed too stark, and looked more like a shadow under a loose piece of cloth, if that makes sense.

i really like the simplified shading/coloring, though, as well as the over-all design.

i went ahead and did an edit to try to put the feet into perspective, touched up the sword in a similar fahsion to CrazyMLC, while trying to fit it more into the perspective of the character, and then tried to tone down the contrast in his shirt as well as a few miscellaneous tweaking throughout - none of which is terribly noticeable.



i hope that helps.

oh, and hello Pixelation.

[Jakten]

thanks for the help guys

I tried to address most of the issues you guys said. I kept his right hand the same for now though, I thought it might stand out more now that I fixed the contrast up a bit. Hopefully the colours aren't too strong, I always have a terrible time with colours.

>
       Old                  New