I Wanna Draw The Girl [WIP]
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=25889
Printed Date: 12 September 2025 at 11:34am
Topic: I Wanna Draw The Girl [WIP]
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Subject: I Wanna Draw The Girl [WIP]
Date Posted: 01 August 2017 at 8:39am
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Hello everyone, I'm ColorAcolyte. I started pixel art since the start of July, I mostly draw one to two sprites per day. However, I think I might have stopped improving(or the progress became slower).
Since I'm really fond of creating characters, especially pixel girls  . I decided to do a personal challenge for myself. I'll be posting a sprite when possible, and I would like to hear everyone's opinion on improving/correcting mistakes.
This is the first sprite for my Challenge: 
(I'll continue posting after 4 days since I'll be going on an vacation.) |
Replies:
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 12 August 2017 at 6:53am
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After some serious thoughts, I figured that 1 girl per day is kinda difficult for me right now. So instead I'll be posting my work whenever I can.
The second sprite I'll be posting is Sanae from Touhou Project: 
I really have a difficult time drawing the skirt. I would like some tips on dealing with skirts, thanks. |
Posted By: Yuran
Date Posted: 13 August 2017 at 11:40am
Hmmm, there are still small problems with proportions |
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 14 August 2017 at 7:38am
These are some changes made according your advice.
I'll finish another one tomorrow. Also, the name of this thread is a reference to "I Wanna be the Guy", in case you didn't get it 
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Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 15 August 2017 at 8:06am
This is a new one, this time I tried using my own color palette instead of a modified preset one(DawnBreaker 32):
the mouth looks weird though, how do I make her smile naturally? Also, she's actually short(140 cm), so I think I got the right proportion this time. |
Posted By: Yuran
Date Posted: 15 August 2017 at 10:09pm
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Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 16 August 2017 at 1:46am
Killed the worm, now it won't pop its head up ever again.
Drafting another girl right now. |
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 18 August 2017 at 8:21am
My new girl,right now I am working on original design. I think the design is a bit bland, any idea on how to improve that? thanks!
This pose is heavily inspired by http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/112537.htm - Eldraev's work . You can almost say that I copied it... :( But it's only for studying purpose, so I won't upload it to the gallery unless he/she approves it. |
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 20 August 2017 at 6:52pm
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After doing this challenge for a while, I noticed some problems/questions that pop up in my head:
1. Should I draft in hi-res before I start drawing in pixel? Right now I've been drawing in pixel from the start, which result in a lot of weird line art. 2. I still can't understand organic palette. I know colors should have hue, saturation, and lightness shifting, but I still don't get why connecting purple and green on the same shifting line is possible. 3. Should I do a lot more fanart than doing original design first? The first 2 pieces are designs made by others, and the piece above is my design, which is bland compare to the pieces above. |
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 21 August 2017 at 9:11am
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1. I find it best to start in the final res, except when working on very large pieces. Starting big will only give you even more weird line art, and will require a lot of time spend adjusting things to work at the small size. 2. Any colour can blend into any other colour, given enough steps. Everyone has different processes for choosing colours, but my process is something like this: - Pick the "black". This is usually a dark purple or dark blue for me. The hue of this colour will be the hue the shadows will shift towards. - Pick the "white". This is usually a yellow-ish colour, and is the colour of the light. If I want my piece to have a cool atmosphere, I'll pick a bluish colour instead. The hue of this colour will be the hue the lights will shift towards. - Pick the midtones. These are the "main" colours. Green, red, etc. I never choose "pure" colours, they're often all a bit warm or a bit cool, which gives the scene a more cohesive, atmosphetic look. These colours should probably also be about as saturated as your palette will get (the dark colours might be more saturated, but the saturation isn't as noticeable there), so these main colours are where you choose how saturated the palette to feel. - Add colours in between the midtones and the "black" and "white" as needed (i.e. as you're working on your actual art). I emphasize "as needed" - you'll quite likely need fewer of either shadows or highlights, depending on what your midtones look like and what your artwork actually needs. You could even initiate new colours by cross-fading between the colours you already have, and adjusting to taste. I usually find myself shifting the hue towards yellow/red/purple and increasing the saturation a little instead of keeping the blended colour as-is. - Whenever you're adding new colours, see how much you're using them. If they're only used in small areas, see if you can merge them with another colour. For small areas, the value is what matters, and the hue is less important. Eliminating similar colours like this can add more unity to the piece, as well as make the palette easier to manage. Lowering the saturation can help the colour blend more easily even with colours that have opposing hues. For example, here, I have a blue shadow on orange leaves:  But that blue (which is also used to shade the greens) has low saturation, so it doesn't clash with the oranges/browns. 3. Fanart or original, doesn't matter if your goal is to learn to pixel well. Simple designs will let you focus on pixel technique and fundamentals like lighting and form. You can move to more complex designs when you want to challenge your skills in fitting details onto a small sprite, and at that point, fan art might be a good idea to save you the time it takes to design an interesting and busy design. In general though, pixel what you feel like pixelling! Even if it means learning a little more slowly, you should do what you enjoy. You'll only burn yourself out if you do things that aren't fun just for the sake of learning. That said, rather than thinking on the fanart - original axis, try to think more in terms of types of subjects. Don't limit yourself to just characters! Characters are complex and your struggles with things like anatomy might be masking your successes and failures in your actual pixelling skills, making it more difficult to learn. |
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 26 August 2017 at 8:04am
Back to drawing girls after a long break! this time I'm trying to tackle some harder and interesting poses. This is the model I'm currently working right now:
I would like to give her a upbeat pose, but it doesn't seem right. Any advice on how to improve would be welcome and appreciated. |
Posted By: Yuran
Date Posted: 27 August 2017 at 1:58pm
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Hi, I'll give you advice on how it's easier to do a pose for your characters (I myself always use this). Confused At the moment, this figure seems a little Embarrassed in its movement. 1. Try to find an example of the future pose. For example, get up yourself in front of a mirror or ask someone to make a video or a photo of how you are trying to guess an effective pose or gesture (in a mental way it's very hard for a person who does not know the anatomy well) 2. what would the pose would not seem clumsy you need to more clearly represent the character's movement vector. 
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Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 31 August 2017 at 10:55pm
Here, this is the new girl with the upbeat pose:
I'm experimenting a bit with colors on this one using the method Eishiya told me. |
Posted By: ColorAcolyte
Date Posted: 01 September 2017 at 6:39pm
Pumping out another one:
I am starting to scale up my sprites in order to cram more details without it looking too weird. |
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 02 September 2017 at 6:20am
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Try not using outlines where you don't need them. Often, colour boundaries are more than enough to differentiate two things, especially when they're attached. For example, on the pink bits on her dress, the outlines are overkill and make it look like they're completely different objects rather than something attached to the dress. Rather than focusing on detail (unless you really want to, of course xP), try working on your lighting/shading. Everything of yours so far has had guesswork shading that doesn't really show volume/depth - it works to differentiate objects, but you can do way more than that! Understanding how light and shadow work can also make it a lot easier to create detail at smaller resolutions. |