Pokemon Yellow Boxart

[Chrispy]

This is an old one that I decided to start fixing up. I wanted to know what changes you guys think I should make.

[Chis]

Get rid of the white outline around the blue lightning from his cheeks?
Also the tips of his ears don't quite follow the source of light.
I think I prefer the softer yellow background, but try making it darker and see what happens

[Chrispy]

I was trying to keep this as close to the original boxart as I could. I probably should've posted a reference to it. The white outline on the lightning was already there. I sorta felt like I should add more contrast to the softer background. I'll try it and see what happens.
Reference is too large to post as a picture, so click here for it.

[Chis]

I see, my mistake

In that case I'd just remove the lightish pixels from around his ears; they look more like a mistake than part of the official art.
Also I notice that the Pikachu on the official art has sort of a more menacing look than yours, I think because he tilts his head more downward?
If you have too much contrast to the background, then it starts competing with the main focus and possibly starts to hurt your eyes, so I'd just leave it. But it's up to you.

[Chrispy]

I'm not adding much contrast. If I add too much it gives the feeling that the 2nd background has. You get too focused on the background to care about the piece. Also I see what you mean about the face, I'll post an edit in a minute fixing the background, ear tips, and face.
EDIT
<-I changed both backgrounds instead of just the one. How's it look now?

[Tuna Unleashed]

some more contrast on pikachu would look really nice. i know it would stray from the boxart a bit but it would look tons better

[Chrispy]

You were right, it does look better this way. It seems closer to the original. I like the darker background more with this.

[7321551]

You've drawn Pikachu's dark outline so that its darker where the line bends, which has the opposite effect of smoothing the line (like this circle). It's easiest to see on the top of the head, where it goes from dark-yellow to black.


2 is edit.

[Chrispy]

Ah, yeah. This was my first work experimenting with AAing on the outlines so I messed it up a bit. is there anywhere else I did that or is it all the way around the outline?

[7321551]

Yeah, the arms had it too - I redid them in my edit too. this is all you really need to know. Outlines are a tricky place to start with AA, because you have to take an intermediate value from both the interior & exterior, sorta. The average of the values is used when the line crosses from one row (or column) of pixels to another, to represent less than a whole "filled" pixel. So in representing a dark line surrounded by light colors, the bends in which the pixels aren't "full" would be lighter, not darker.