moved to WIP forums. so these are custom habbo edits?

Gradients aren't good in pixel art, even if placed pixel by pixel. They don't really make things look 3D since nothing has a curve that smooth normally and they also use too many colours. In pixel art it's usually good practice to limit your colour count.


@Blarg: It's really hard to critique this since there are so many of them. So I'll just the list errors you've made, explain what they mean, what they are and why they're bad. Then I'll make an edit of a random one.  I'll edit this post later with it.

You don't really shade any of the characters, and the ones you do just make a bevel effect rather than actual 3D form, since you only shade the edges.

The shading also isn't really noticeable since it's small and there is basically no contrast.

Not only that but it's also pillow shading, which is when the light comes from infront. which just doesn't look right because it's very VERY rare that there is a light-source in front of you.

You've mixed 2x2 pixels with 1x1 with just looks odd.

On that muscular one the anatomy is incorrect (I'll edit that one).

You've used too many colours with too little contrast, it just makes everything blurry.

You've made their legs touching and completely straight, that's very hard to do and doesn't look natural.

For the moment rather than creating detail you should concentrate on learning how to choose colours and create 3D form, as atm you have straight colour ramps (which is when each colour has it's own shades and highlights rather than mixing them together) with no hue shifting (Mixing red in with yellow to make it darker) which makes the colours look boring. As I said I'll edit my post with an edit of one of your characters.

EDIT2:



Right now for actual direct crits based on a piece.

The human form is perfect for learning how to build form and how to control your pixels since there is so much going on.

I'll list everything I did, I basically kept the lineart more or less the same, I didn't put as much effort into his trousers as I did for the body. So ignore that really, I just showed you that for the most part people don't put their legs right next to each other, especially not when showing off their muscles.

Anyway. I changed the palette, skin is basically a really desaturated orange, with more red than yellow. Then for the shades I added more red and then blue. Then finally I added a yellow for the highlight. You only need those 4 shades and a black really for dry skin. I chose those colours because red is darker than yellow even with the same luminance and saturation values. You'll get a feel for that with time. I also used more contrast so you can see the difference in shades.

I also used shading to define the muscles rather than lines. You should use references when making any art based on real life. Abs, despite popular belief are not like that. The line art for the arms was good though.

I pushed the shading out away from the lines, based on where the light does or doesn't hit rather than just where the lines are. You've got to think of everything as shapes rather than was the lines are.

With eyes on that small of a scale you can't use colours it's best to just use black. The pupil black and we wouldn't see the green on that scale.

I added a collar bone too.

Also if this is the habbo style, I wouldn't try copying it again, just for the moment learn how to do the basics.


Edited by theguy - 09 January 2011 at 10:16am

Gradient's still aren't good.

Make them different! Now they all look like they are sentenced to be shot.