What's with the bubble thing? Venture out and try other styles of shading. Don't be a one-trick pony! D:

Otherwise, looks good so far.

Oh shiz! LOVE that ditherting! :D

And his last name is really "Champions"? X) I could imagine their family singing. We are the Champions, my friends...

Okey, I see,I will try to find another texture for the skin, but I will keep the bubble texture on shirt it really fits there.

Before all you say this is way over dithered, think this is a beard it supposed to buy fuzzy and a bit blurry and it is natural for shadows to flow smoothly. If someone gives me an edit where it looks better, then I will change it. :)
Beard:


Edited by tormi1000 - 16 August 2010 at 1:33am

Thanks :)

Agree with jeremy. Blockout first, details later.

I dunno, I like the bubbly thing; it feels like it connects thematically to his previous Coldplay piece, a connection that those of us who don't know the visages of the band members can use to link them.

I disagree in principle. I'm sure there are people out there who can do without it. However, its usually a good idea to do so.

One way to do it is to find geometrical lines/polygons in the face. It's helpful to block shades, as it keeps you from imagining shapes you know and concentrate on actual shapes you see.
There are certainly many ways to choose these lines, and mine are not very good, I'm new to this! ;)
This are just guides, you don't have to keep those shapes as visible in the final work of course. You may, too.

Search the forums, I'm sure Helm posted about it on Pixelation.

No offense, but those 'polygon' based images just don't work. Geometry/topologywise they just make no sense.

Think lowpoly 3D model, not color blotches in the photo. Here are some good references:

That, and skin color, and ambient light, etc. A lot of
things can mess around with our perception of colors,
light, dark and such. You've probably seen this before:


The big difference is this:
You try to recreate the image, while I try to recreate
the head.This leads to much more versatile and beneficial
results.

For instance, if you drew a lowpoly Champion, you could
easily change the lighting to be from the left side, or
from above, or both. It also leads to a better understan-
ding of concepts such as shadow, volume and anatomy.

Oh and a general statement here: doing another type of
art (3d, painting, sculpting) will help you pixel better.
Basic concepts like lighting carry over pretty well.

Ok I actually found time today so here is my latest version. Is it any better?

So what should I do next?...

Edited by tormi1000 - 25 August 2010 at 4:48am

because nobody answered i got bored and did some dithering :D

Just saw your update. You can bin that, it's WAY overdithered.

Just wanted to show you this:

To show how much of an improvement you've already made,
but also that you can push it even further.

While painting this, and looking at your latest image,
I noticed something. I think I've found out one problem
you're having, which might be either the cause or re-
sult of your heavy usage of dithering.

You're trying to smooth things out too much. This is
quite evident in the large shapes of the neck and
forehead, but what tipped me off was the splotchy +
shaped light part under his mouth.

Don't be afraid to have some harsh shadows in places,
in fact that's how reality is: soft smooth surfaces
mixed up with angular shapes.

If you look at the underside of the mustache in the
reference pic, there's quite a sudden change in dark-
ness. Similarly, the triangular spike on the cheek/jaw
has a gradient in your image, but rather sudden color-
changes in the reference image.

In my paintover I fixed those 2 things. I also edited
a few things based on the other shots i posted earlier,
such as the forehead-ball-thing and where hair grows.
I also 'made up' some extra detail around the neck
(those muscles exist, but they're only very faintly
visible in the ref pic) and added a faint rimlight.

You can get pointers to get a more detailed image by
using multiple references, and with time your knowledge
of light and anatomy will grow, allowing you to make up
some things.

You'll also notice that the hairlines aren't 'clean'. This
was done because IRL hair doesn't follow an exact
line either. The spraycan was used, which is technically
NPA, but I consider it a good tool while sketching. You
can also opt to draw lines, scribble, or manually click
a bunch of pixels to soften the hairlines a bit.

So in short:
-mix up angular and round forms, harsh and soft shading
-get extra shape-info from other references
-hairlines look better when they're a bit messy
-sketches don't have to be pixelperfect, so you can use:
   ~larger brush
   ~spraycan
   ~scribbled lines/crosshatching      

Wow snader, your last comment really helped!!! Now I can really feel the progress.
So here is what I have done:

Okey so experimented with dithering and colors
But I still got one BIG problem the forehead, :P
keep it this way would be just too ugly, so i tried to dither it, just a little but then it looked like color reduced photo :S Rest of the picture is easy :)

lol this picture has this old western kind a look :D

Edited by tormi1000 - 27 August 2010 at 5:33pm

Thanks Kovenant :)
But can someone tell me what I should do next and what can I do about the forehead:P

It look jut like a cheap color reduced photo..........

Edited by tormi1000 - 28 August 2010 at 6:24am

You could start by adding some subtle wrinkles to add a bit more detail. This also breaks up the surface a bit, so you can move your dither patterns over a bit.

You can also improve how you use dithering. Remember what I said about trying to smooth things out too much? That goes for dithering as well.

It might also be an idea to use different dithering patterns. This for instance uses pretty agressive dithering:

ignore the white dither. wtf was i thinking?
but it doesn't just use it to soften. If you look at the nose, for instance, you can see a gradient going from the bottomleft to the topright, while the frontal plane is still clearly defined. Similarly, in the topright of the image, at the dark part of the hairline, you can see a few dithery spots where that indicate the hairline. In the same area, you can see how the shadow of my center-hairtuft slowly diffuses.

You should stop thinking of dithering as purely a way to soften the image. See the indents in my forehead? The wrinkle in my neck? The line marking my right(image left) cheek? Those are areas that you would probably have tried to dither smooth.

For instance, on Champion:
-add forehead wrinkles
-use dithering as an intermediate shade for more accurate shading (if you want, you can put in some temporary extra colors for that, and later replace them by dither)
-use neater dithering (the +shapes in the dark area are really ugly and randomly placed)
-think very very carefully about what you're trying to show. I spent a lot of time fiddling with only 10x10 pieces of dither (like next to the mouth) to get it to flow nicely
-act natural, I think someone is following us.

Edited by snader - 28 August 2010 at 12:35pm