Elysian Shadows

My Deviant Art: http://xiphirx.deviantart.com/
Pixel Art:
(Newest to Oldest)

Red Tailed Hawk


Self Portrait


Comments, critiques welcome.


Totally did not copy zeid D:

Looks good but uh.. take the palette out.

dandymcgee wrote:Looks good but uh.. take the palette out.

Why D;

The face proportions are pretty good.

I was originally going to do an edit, instead I ended up re-doing the entire face in the way I would have gone about it.



Before I mention how I came to this, I should say I obviously don't have a picture of you to go by so I can't pixel your face in particular. It also means I couldn't point out faults in your piece as they may just be exagerated features of your face that you just happen to have. So instead of trying these things I just made a generic face.

***
1) The colour choice; You need a higher level of contrast, and variety in colours. If the difference between two colours is not noticable, then there is no point in having both. In my image I have chosen to re-use some colours from my avatar, and added a couple of new 'buffer colours' as well. I did this to save me a lot of time as skin palletes can be tricky sometimes. I remember when I was making my avatar I went through a lot of different colour schemes as I would come back to it later realising it had somehow ended up too yellow or too red. Eyes adjust to the irregularity of the colours and you often don't notice that your colours are wrong untill you look at it again later.

Skin is hard to get right, think about all thats going on with the light as well as the physiology of the face. Skin is translucent, this means blood vessels, bone, etc. are all contributing to the overall colour of different areas. There is also facial hair and blemishes to consider.

On top of this are the lighting conditions, light is refracting everywhere. So the environment will also influence the final colours of the face. This is all just for choosing the correct colour scheme and where to apply it. You might be surprised what colours actually end up on your face. If you look hard you will likely see reds, greens, blues, possibly pinks all depending on your complection and things around you.

2) As I said, the proportions of the face are pretty good. However there is probably a lot you haven't considered. Rather then picking out features like the nose, mouth and eyes, try and create the entire piece using the 'planes of the face'. i.e.

I also recommend checking out Burne Hogarth. He really exaggerates whats 'there' and this can give you a great understanding of the underlying forms and structures of the body/face.
***

What's Zeid is really trying to say is... JEW IT UP and have a good one, cheers.

Haha Zeid, that's the thing that bugs me the most, I couldn't get the colors right.

It does actually look like me (extremely surprising). Maybe I'll try to fix the colors later I have a party from 9pm to 5am I need to waste my life at 8-|.

Maybe I can steal your colors D;

Your welcome to use my pallete. Using other peoples colours is also a good idea for learning.
Edit:
for those interested, I have real work to do... That of course means I finished this off instead.
Manified/Finished->
I could dribble on about how this show that you can take the proportions and anatomy you laid out and adjust it to create the face that you actually want as oppose to just having a generic face. But really this was just coz I felt like it.

Just wanted to say zeid, I never noticed that your avatar had an animation. I must say, it made me jump haha! I saw something glow out of the corner of my eye and I was like wtf??? And then I saw it giving me the eye...

haha

XianForce wrote:Just wanted to say zeid, I never noticed that your avatar had an animation. I must say, it made me jump haha! I saw something glow out of the corner of my eye and I was like wtf??? And then I saw it giving me the eye...

haha

I just noticed that too... I think it might be new

Its not new, its been like that forever, scared the shit outta me too a long time ago :P

Wow, this is a pretty sweet topic! Cool new avatar, Xiphirx, and nice remake Zeid.

Perhaps you should take a look at http://elysianshadows.com/phpBB3/viewto ... art=999999 and see if you'd be interested in turning your post about facial pixelation into a small article in the E-Newsletter?

Ginto8 wrote:

XianForce wrote:Just wanted to say zeid, I never noticed that your avatar had an animation. I must say, it made me jump haha! I saw something glow out of the corner of my eye and I was like wtf??? And then I saw it giving me the eye...

haha

I just noticed that too... I think it might be new

Yeah, it's been there for a very, very long time.

Final touchups (barely noticable);

Perhaps I should move this too my own art thread or something rather then off railing yours.

Yup, my avatar has always been like that since I joined. The screwing with people so that they go, "Was it always like that?", was intentional. Glad to see it's working.

Perhaps you should take a look at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5009&start=999999 and see if you'd be interested in turning your post about facial pixelation into a small article in the E-Newsletter?

I would be happy to contribute some pixel art tutorials or something for that whenever I get time. I was even thinking of making some posts on my blog of a similar nature.

zeid wrote:Final touchups (barely noticable);

Perhaps I should move this too my own art thread or something rather then off railing yours.

Yup, my avatar has always been like that since I joined. The screwing with people so that they go, "Was it always like that?", was intentional. Glad to see it's working.

Perhaps you should take a look at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5009&start=999999 and see if you'd be interested in turning your post about facial pixelation into a small article in the E-Newsletter?

I would be happy to contribute some pixel art tutorials or something for that whenever I get time. I was even thinking of making some posts on my blog of a similar nature.

You're not off railing mine, you're giving advice

You're not off railing mine, you're giving advice

In that case final image:

* Cleaned up a lot of the dithering and the jaw line.
* Continuously flipped the image and reworked it over and over, to make it balanced. This is a good trick and it keeps your perspective of the image fresh.
* Softened the nose and widened the eyes, (as per your suggestions on pixelation). This is a good lesson in itself, even though I was the one giving advice in the first place it never stops being beneficial to listen to what others have to say. i.e. don't get cocky, I still have a lot more to learn when it comes to art and I know it.

With a little more colour reduction:
8 Colours
* It's not usually a good idea to use a pure white or pure black background when creating pixel art. It's not a strict rule or anything but it can help at times to use a more mid value colour/shader. To describe why, is to talk about how light works. Simply put the lighter colour/shade will bleed over the darker or less dominant colour/shade. This means a white shade put against a black shade will appear bigger then the area it actually occupies. Whereas a black against white will appear smaller. This in part was why I removed the white background.
* I feel after saying that I should make something clear having just said that. In more traditional media you are discouraged from using pure whites or blacks, as they don't represent how light typically exists. However in pixel art it is largely encouraged. Pixel art is about getting the most out of each pixel, so such phenomenom are there for you to take advantage. A white dot next to a black dot in pixel art can mean a lot, maybe a bullet hole in the side of a sheet of metal, maybe a belly button. Notice the mole on my character has a light colours next to a dark colour to create the impression of some form.
* Pixel art technique's are relatively quick and easy to learn, getting a solid art foundation takes a lot longer and is a lot harder but is worth a lot more. "A rough diamond is worth more then a polished turd".
* Getting the level of detail I have achieved isn't about working on the pixel level. It's about working on the sub-pixel level.

Some of those tips will be usefull some perhaps less so, but there's a little bit to ponder on.

Eye fix, colour fix, light source fix, cleaning up the dithering:

then forehead felt flat so: