Floating Island
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=20945
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 5:59am
Topic: Floating Island
Posted By: 7ry
Subject: Floating Island
Date Posted: 17 January 2015 at 8:29pm
Hey, I'm somewhat new to pixelling. This is probably the biggest canvas I've worked with so far and I'd like some advice on the piece.
I'll document my progress on the thread so critique, tips, and comments are highly appreciated. Advice related to color and how to shade the grass/soil would be helpful ;; |
Replies:
Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 18 January 2015 at 3:49am
|
You seem to like muted and soft palettes so we'll have to see how that comes along. I do find the tree canopy contrast a bit low now. ------------- |
Posted By: Iscalio
Date Posted: 18 January 2015 at 5:00am
|
Hey! Looks like a good start, I can't even imagine how long those leaves took.
I'll comment on the tree, cause that seems the most finished part that would desire review. Your method of various levels for tree leaf groups is good, but could be tweaked I think. It looks appealing as you haven't gone straight to black in shadows, but made darker colors more saturated and more toward blue. But I think you could take this further and stretch your hue change more to give a more vibrant life to the areas where the tree is hit by sunlight. I'd also suggest breaking up these large areas into more varied shapes (I will attach my quick paintover and link some examples). You might choose a leaning side for the trunk or a low side for the leaves. This is just a quick paintover to build different shapes or tweak colors. I put some variation into the trunk and added a shadow at the top where the leaves are blocking sunlight. The leaf hue variation is slightly wider. 
Here are some PixelJoint trees that have a good level of variation. skeddles: 
-DE-: 
|
Posted By: PixelSnader
Date Posted: 19 January 2015 at 12:46am
Your biggest issue is form of the detail vs form of the overall object. Your bark and your leaves are very high contrast in detail, which leaves little contrast to shade the sphere and the cylinder that are the foliage and the tree trunk.
You have B, you want C. It's mostly the case in the trunk, but still apparent in the foliage which is the same rough brightness across the entire width; only giving a vertical gradient. And like Iscalio mentioned, work in some blobbiness, trees aren't really one singular dense mass. ------------- ▄▄█ ▄▄█ ▄█▄ ▄█▄ |
Posted By: Iscalio
Date Posted: 19 January 2015 at 11:19am
|
"which leaves little contrast"
I see what you did there. So you'd aim to shade the tree like a sphere? I guess I never really thought about mentally converting objects into their basic forms. I have tended to think about light sources, but not object shape too much, at least not directly. Maybe it's cause I try to avoid basic shapes for fear of making things look too generic. I'll have to make a mental note to think about basic shapes when working on light and shadow of more complex objects that are rough approximations of these shapes. |
Posted By: andrae
Date Posted: 20 January 2015 at 4:20pm
|
The canopy of the tree is too detailed making it hard to look at. My suggestion is to put only the details on some areas to help in identifying the form. I'm not really good at explaining but here's a simpler explanation by Chisari: http://fav.me/d7ohz01 (the last section) Good to see you here 7ry. |