I'd really like to see the piece without the background/frame. :D The character kind of just sinks into it.

I'm sorry. It's a pomegranate! Please forgive me, I slept like 2 hours last night

No I didn't look at a reference. I wanted to try to shade something without the aid of a reference. I really struggle with the concept of shading. I can only perceive flat objects if I don't use a ref. What do you mean by shadow core? The curve doesn't occupy enough of the shape? And how do you portray reflected light on the bottom?

Edited by Frost Butt - 07 October 2011 at 11:55am

whoa...  You are so much more talented than me lol.  I'm not quite sure I understand your shading, because in the reference you have, the bottom right corner is lighter, where you have your deepest shadow with only a sliver of reflected light. 
I don't understand how you each color layer.  You have a sort of S shape, which I can't discern in the reference. 
Your colors are delicious; I actually did the hue shifting, but you proved that I need to shift much more

Thanks a bunch to everyone helping.  It really means a lot :)


Edited by Frost Butt - 07 October 2011 at 2:30pm

When you shade an object, it's... okay, it's weird. You have all kinds of levels. You'll rarely find something that's actually just DARK on one part. You have your core-- the darkest part-- the reflected light (which is that light bit at the bottom. It's not super bright but looks so b/c it's against a really dark part of the image), your highlight, and a few inbetweens. This is because light isn't just... like an arrow? It bounces around-- and then hits your eye. So light could be hitting the table, then bouncing up and hitting the pomegranate-- so there's the reflected light.
The way the pom is currently shaded (before Delicious' edit), it looks almost as if your character is a flat... button? Like he sticks out a little, but is actually flat (a short, squat cylinder! :D) Extending that shadow-- not being afraid to give something dramatic lighting, is what helps you express that as a 3-D object. That's why your art teacher turned off all the lights and lit a few lamps/whatever when you were in art class (if he/she did that, of course. :P). If you take a picture of something using a flash on your camera, or just having it be in a normal, brightly lit room, it'll end up super flat in any reproduction b/c there's not much shadow to it. So more shadow's a good thing. :) Though going overboard isn't advised either. You'll know when you hit a happy medium. Shadow often influences the mood of your piece. So if it feels wrong, you mess with it more. :)
With the shadow on Delicious' edit, the reason it bends in an S is because a pomegranate isn't a perfect sphere (you'll rarely find a perfect sphere-- unless it's manmade). So, within the shadows, there will be movement to suggest the fact that it isn't round.
I found a nice image of the labelled parts of shadow. They help (or did last year in my drawing class). ^^

Essentially, yeah. Read all of this tutorial by Arne.

Look at the texture in the pic Delicious posted - all the wrinkles, the colours.
horrible blocking-in:

I feel like I've failed everyone here who is trying to help.  I'm trying as hard as I can, I've read everyone's post over and over again.  I sat at my computer alone for hours and this is what I have


It looks like a stupidly stratified ball with a stem. 

I give up.

Thanks to everyone who helped

You did great. All you need now is to clean and polish each pixel area or 'cluster'. I would stay away from dithering tho since this is a shiny object. Just AA once the areas are clean.

well, at least now I know I can kind of do a strawberry texture



      



Edited by Frost Butt - 07 October 2011 at 10:36pm

Looks like a sugar glazed apple :D

Haha Onek..
yeah, the shading suggests it is more round than I like, and the texture looks weird. Also the coloring does make it too glossy. I think I'll move onto something else though. Huge thanks to everyone who helped, even after I was really discouraged

I tried to fix the bright bumps, but it didn't look as good when I toned down the bright bits and I wanted to keep the color to 8.  I also added a leaf just for accompaniment.  It was hard to add one and retain the 64X64 size.







Edited by Frost Butt - 08 October 2011 at 10:31am

THe original photo is errored for me too (I assume it was taken down) but every other photo in the thread shows up fine for me.