I am of course interested to see an edit!
The bushes are the most complicated pattern I ever worked on. Every edit I do on them does not feel like progress rather like running in a maze.
Thanks for your feedback, friend!

PixelSnader, thank you for the references! I will take a look onto these. However two of the references were rather less useful due those trees being really old and giant. Nonetheless I got your idea with rather bowed/curved form.


Edited by Lakelezz - 17 October 2014 at 2:54pm

while playing around with your piece, I realized how well drawn everything is.  :]

the most obvious things that were cleaned up were the two characters.  For example, you may notice that the harmony between the dress and hair is much improved, simply by paying more attention to every single pixel and every single pixel cluster.  After just a few clicks, I was amazed at the potential that was right below the surface–Again, your drawing was very good, but some of the greatness was hidden behind a few mindless pixels here and there. 

This is also noticeable in the outlines of things.  For instance, the outline of the hair of the little boy.  If you look closely on your version, the outline is a little sketchy.  But again, a few pixels here and there and proper understanding of AA and somehow fine tuning the outline of the hair really brings out the greatness of the design of the character, because again, a few technical problems were hiding some greatness.

I also played with the bushes.  I copy and pasted some of your older bushes because the shape better fit your pixeling of the bushes.  Lo and behold, again, with a few more mindful pixel changes here and there in the bushes, even the very dirty pixeling there can look ok.  And obviously, because other things have been touched up and cleaned, it allows for the bushes to be messy.  (When everything is sketchy, the bushes just reinforce it.  When everything is tightened up, the bushes can be dirty, as long as you can achieve a uniform, controlled and mindful look within the dirtiness.)

(little tweaks throughout the whole image as well.)

I really liked the cobblestones in the second image still though :]


Edited by Friend - 18 October 2014 at 9:50am

To clarify, the palette change I made was not part of my critique, but just playing around and to differentiate my edit. My critique is solely about your sketchy pixeling

That is one seriously creepy picture.

Looks good though!

Keep playing with it until your satisfied.

Couldn't you keep the 'highlights' even in the shadows? Now, this image is only to illustrate my point, I'm not suggesting you overlay semi-transparent black over the cobbles, neither am I suggesting you add a bunch of new colours to make the shadows. However, would it be possible to bring each value in the shadow area down a step or two in the palette, maybe even going all the way to black?



I really like the image by the way, amazing development from the first post :)

No. That's not how highlights and shadows work.

Highlights are specular reflections, which are dependent on a direct line between the lightsource and the object that's lit. It will still be lit diffusely, from light bouncing off of other objects, but because of the nature of diffuse (i.e. 'widely spread out') light, there won't be any highlights.

It could be possible if we were to work with a translucent material for the ghost, but then you'd have to be able to somewhat accurately work in diffraction. And then you'd still only get a very minor specular effect, because of how the ghost's body diffracts and distorts the light bundle, making it more scattered and less uniform/directional.

Here is a simple shape, and you can see how much caustics/refraction already affect the direction and intensity of the light.

And as the shape becomes more complex, the resulting lightcast becomes even more complex.

We could assume that the ghost is a sort of smoke? Smoke are small bits of a material, but not small enough to be separate molecules; they're clumps. And they are like mini-objects. They won't bend light uniform, but scatter it around, again making it diffused light. Not entirely diffuse, but enough to make highlights spread out.

You can create a striking effect of translucency without a precise model of how the light moves, sure, but then you have to base it on diffuse light. And you'd have to add a lot of extra colors plus it wouldn't work well with the monochromatic aestetic. And even though it could be a decent effect for the ghost, it still won't do anything for the specular reflection of the cobblestones.

In short, you can't reasonably pixel the specular reflections from a light inside the shadow of that same light.

It could sort of work in a case like this:

But that's because the specular reflections in the shadows are from different lights than the ones casting those shadows. In this ghost image, however, there's one dominant lightsource; the streetlight.

Related to this babbling about physics, I suggest you make the shadows a bit blurry, because the lamppost isn't a point light, but a fairly large box, and thus should give a noticable penumbra:


The longer the relative distance (compared the distance to the lightsource) between a point on an object, and that same point on the object's shadow, the blurrier it becomes. In most cases this means that shadows are sharp at the feet, blurry at the head:


This effect is much more pronounced with artificial lights, because the sun is 'infinitely' far away.

And now I gotta run and pick someone up from the airpoirt kthxbye

Wow, thanks for your comprehensive post, PixelSnader :)
It will probably help me quite a lot while I try to improve generally!
However I guess that shadows will just destroy the pavement. Specially when I follow what you wrote o:
I might try it again when I fixed my bushes :(

Could my piece be denied on the gallery if I would stick to the current bush style?


Edited by Lakelezz - 25 October 2014 at 4:21pm

Thank you very much(!), PixelSnader :)
I really like the idea of your edit. When I start working on the animation I will try to do some diffused shadows. Nonetheless I want the shadows to change in their strength according to the flicker (weak, strong, no light) of the lamp.

However the bushes were really freaking me out. I edited them again.

Old:


This is what I ended up with for now:

I don't have a big critique for you, but encouragement. I hope that's okay. c:

I just read the entirety of this thread - dude, you're amazing.

Not only have you improved so much in a single thread, you responded maturely to the critique. Your textures are fantastic! What you have now is probably going to give me nightmares.

(My only comment might not even be relevant.)
The lantern's light extends to the background, too. I'm fond of the pitch black background, but if you ever wanted to expand and show a dim background, that would be cool. I dunno.

That is all. Fantastic job, you. c: Keep it up!

PS: Stop hatin' on the bushes. They're beautiful.

Thanks!

I do like the new purple. :)

Oh! I was talking to you because you kept saying you didn't like them. I guess I don't know much about the technical side of pixeling and all the terms, haha.

Is it just me, or is the flicker different? I don't see the actual "flicker" movement now; I'm only seeing off and on. A very short flicker if anything.

If someone doesn't mind could you post a version of the pic not through deviant art?

Are they floating? There is so much light under them where I feel like they would cast shadows from the lamp.

That is good. But in my opinion lantern blinks too much. It's quite hard to check out all details. Could you make it stand turned on for about 3 seconds?

Edited by Finlal - 31 October 2014 at 3:51pm

You did awesome!
More PJers should take advantage of the forum as you have.