You really should bring the contrast up to define areas. Its all so flat looking.

I didnt doo anything with the light , shading. What I did is written in the image..

WOW. Ok, thanks everyone, I'll get right on it.

Also, small question Dra_chan, I can just continue working from the edit you made then? Or should I just re-create what you did on my own?

I'll be sure to give you all credit once I'm done. And once again thank you for the support.

here's an edit showing more form in the face, rather than just being a balloon shape with eyes nose and mouth drawn on top of it.


you should increase the contrast, and shade inside, as well as near the edges.

Hope it helps.

It's really just practice, don't get yourself down.

Study portraits, pixel and traditional.  Maybe get a book on proportion and such and just practice drawing realistically rather than putting generic features on a flat plane.  It's not that hard, just take a bit of time ;)

No, you may not go further on dra_chans edit, because dra chans edit is an edit on my edit, and I dont want you to use my edit in your final work :).. Just watch the things we have done, thats much better than copying it...

What do you want?? The best artwork, or the best skills??? With better skills you can create your own great things next time :).. but if you copy you wont learn that much

Looking a lot better.

Biggest problem at the moment is that the shoulders are very square. I'd round them out a little.

Also contrast of the skin tones is very low and should be upped.

and increase the overall contrast in the piece. that's the biggest problem that i see.

You're showing off some really nice improvement here. Unfortunately, adjusting your contrast upwards will betray some inaccurate shading:

Yours, palette tweak, simplification:


As you can see, there are a number of spots that are just needlessly complicated. You can get a lot of mileage from subtle suggestion, from using your pixels sparingly. The mouth for example, is just two horizontal lines. Move two pixels up to give him back his grin. Change the color of five pixels to white to make his grin toothy. Even if you're not going to use such a simplistic shading style, the less complex forms will serve you well.

It's not so much that you have to get rid of shading, you just have to do it accurately. I went pretty extreme with the simplification because I was trying to make a point. Please do NOT compromise the style you were shooting for.

Did some more tweaking and fiddling. Made the shoulder pads a bit more rounder.



While I wait for feedback I'll go catch up on this week's challenge.

seriously put some contrast between the shades it will look flat if you don't

First off, you have vastly improved and your dedication to improving is admirable.
That you placed the old version as the preview worked against you, as you can tell. For this it would have worked better if you have a title saying 'updated' and then show a progress image showing that there has been some improvement in time.
This however does not mean that the current final is a strong pixel. Lack of contrast and overall color selections are still on the poor side.

I'll make a tiny edit in a section to illustrate what direction you could take to elevate the quality. I'm currently devastated with my pirate ship and need a break...this will distrect me :)

This is precisely my interest in helping you get it in.
anyhoo, I just wanted to show the 'mugshot' view and lighting is the main problem. I left your image alone and just changed lights.

WHOA. That's quite the difference there jalonso.

I think my biggest problem right now is deciding how close do I want to stay to the source material?



The face is 3D, but still has this cartoonish (flat) look to it. And the hair literally glows.

So now I have to decide whether I should keep the hair kinda glowing and bright like it is in the game, or dumb it down several shades like everyone else did with their edits. Same for the face.

Hmm... decisions, decisions.

edit:

Thanks Larwick. But the shoulders were flat before, and someone said to make them rounder.

And I have been patient.... 12 months patient.


Edited by greenraven - 01 December 2007 at 5:26pm

Since this is going to be my main avatar I want to get this down right.

Ok, so I've been thinking and looking over the edits and comments. And I've noticed two things:

• The hair. It's been shown in a darker, more 'realistic', way.
  
• Light source. Every one of them has on consistency, one singular light source coming from one angle.
  

All of the comments and edits are great, I really do appreciate them all, but I think they're made without fully knowing the reference I'm trying to work from. Sometimes these things are a little hard to describe without a visual aid, so I found some videos to help me better explain.

The first video is to show the type of art style I'm shooting for with the face. Video 1.

The second one is to show the light source. (1:15, 2:15 and 6:30 have the light source I'm going for) Video 2.

As you can see the light source is omnipresent. It comes from the walls, the ceiling, the weapons, the armor, the enemies, the hair (though not from the character in this video, mine actually glows), even the floors. Literally everything has some sort of display or readout, or is emitting light in some shape or form. The lines in the background of my picture are actually a virtual cyber grid.

I'm trying to fuse together the look and feel of the gameplay with the look and feel of the story scenes.

So here's what I need to get across with this picture:

Light sources actually shown:

• Hair, it glows.
• Eyes, it is a mage after all.
• Digital ID Crest/Emblem (half circle at the base of the neck).
• Cyber grid in the background.

Light sources presumed to be there:

• Screens/monitors/readouts/displays to the left, right and in front of.
• Various lights and buttons faintly glowing on the armor itself.
  

Gee, I sure know how to pick the easy ones.

jal (or anyone else up to the challenge), if it's not too much trouble, could you make another edit based on the criteria above?

Edited by greenraven - 02 December 2007 at 6:59pm

Thanks for the support Hatch, it really means a lot.

That's actually what I've been doing this whole time. Between this...

and this...


I've restarted about 5 times from scratch and made countless edits. Yeah I realize what I'm trying to achieve is a bit (a wee bit ) beyond my skill level. But I can wait, all good things are worth the wait in the end.

Thanks Metaru, I'll go try your palette.

It doesn't sound that bad when you provide the full story, Sherlock. Specially when you ironically bitch about MMORPGs and you confess your preference for one that has an offline version.

:D

ME = PWN

I will remember this in the morning, and I don't mind the off topicness it amuses me.

Anyways, I've been fiddling with the palette some more. I'm too tired right now, I'll upload it tomorrow morning.

That would actually be cool, maybe it will be a new fad.

Anyways, I tweaked the palette some more. And then, I had the urge to... ANIMATE!

I think the mouth fine where it is. But I'll move it up, maybe it will look better.

Okey dokey, moved the mouth up.

----->

With unFreeze you can't set frame rates for each individual frame, but rather all the frames at once. But I can just show that frame twice, so no biggie.

As for the eyes, I did that in a sort of anime style. His eyes are kinda half closed at first because he's in a relaxed state, then he fully opens his eyes when alert. But I'll try it without the lids fully opened.