Hey, everybody! I lately wanted to upload one of my pieces to PJ, specifically this piece:



But the moderator won't accept it on the ground of quality. I'm kind of disappointed, because I felt this was my best piece of pixel art up to date and an earlier piece which I consider to be inferior was readily accepted.

Anyway, do you guys have any ideas of how to improve upon it? I imagine that, considering this is the current pinnacle of my abilities, any improvement I could make on it will go far in improving my skills.

Well I dunno about being accepted or anything, so I'll stay out of that part.

I would think more contrast on the sword would help enormously.  Also, swords are usually smooth and shiny, so you wouldn't want that rough dithered texture on the blade.  There's a nifty metal shading tutorial somewhere around the forum, if you want to try to find it (I forget where I saw it exactly, most likely the Resources forum).

Try knocking off those corner parts. It should look much better if you just take out the sharp corner pixels. Also you might replace the black with a darker version of the inside colors. Also, if you can see a circular patch of ground that unless the sword in shoved in at angle you would see the top of the blade and the top of the hilt. You have tipped the ground, now tip the sword into the same position.

Edited by Pixel_Outlaw - 04 February 2008 at 8:37pm