Hello dear pixel-artists!

I am currently working on this piece:


The idea is to display a strong zoom on a squirrels eye which reflects his target which is an acorn nut!

On this thread I will document my progress!
Therefore I would be very thankful to hear your opinion and ideas :)

However keep in mind that I am aware the piece being very sketchy at some points! This will be changed of course.

Thanks for reading - I appreciate that!

Thanks!

I guess you are right. I will probably remove those "bubbles". They were meant to add some more roundish feeling of the eye. Probably the wrong style, too. This would rather be more like manga/anime/cartoon.

Additionally I will try to improve the acorn's readability. However I need to keep the distorted roundish reflecting eye in mind, too.



Edited by Lakelezz - 23 November 2014 at 12:40pm

I like the style of the new reflections! However, are you intending to have two light sources? I only see one lightsource on the acorn. ;)

a reflection is perfect :o) good job. I like it. For the light I am not expert in this... I just liked first version of lighting better.

Edited by RebeaLeion - 13 December 2014 at 5:01pm

I am still finding it hard to read.

I think this step is a noticeable improvement!
The acorn cap texture doesn't appear to curve around the cap's form, I think that's the weakest part of the whole image so far. The cap also looks a bit flat, acorn caps typically stick out quite a bit beyond the rest of the acorn (if it's a ripe one).

In the photo you posted, the nut-cap ratio is quite different to what you drew. The cap is quite small in yours.

The texture looks a lot better, but I think it still feels a bit flat near the edges where it should be curving around the cap.

Acorns are usually fairly dull, so I think you could "dull" the highlights on it even more. Try getting rid of the brightest two colours, perhaps?

I worked on another edit of my piece. However focused on eishiya's words since I just read what Mr.Fahrenheit wrote a few seconds ago, haha.



I think Illke's way of thinking about colour spread can be neat but does not work on every style nor on every palette. Nonetheless I am pretty sure Illke is able to use the method quite well and does know when to use it.
Despite that I like your turn on the cap and might gonna try it out.
Additionally thinking about the nut itself gave me quite some hard time again. I made also a dull version but disliked it quite a lot. That is the reason for my mix of the rather white highlight and dull light.

So, after a rather long pause due a lot of stress I finally came back to this piece.
First of all, thanks Limes for your feedback, it helped me!

I made some new changes on the cap of the nut. The reason was to get more out of the area - making it interesting.
However I feel like the bright upper part still needs some work - so please take that into account.
Additionally I started to work on the rest of piece. Though the changes might not be that significant.



As always: I appreciate your feedback quite a lot since it is helping strongly.

Oh, and a happy new year :)

Pixelling is going well.
I would say at this point that the more realistic you go with the nut you'll have to match in the fur. If unbalanced it could all fail?

I edited my piece again!

-The fur got updated on quite a lot places.
-Minor changes on the light reflections.




Edited by Lakelezz - 02 January 2015 at 3:52pm

Thanks for your feedback, ADrawingMan!

You mean the brown colours of the dermis or how the fur's brown is relating to the eye?

I really enjoyed your idea of how to bring everything more into and giving the whole thing more depth.
My new update is focusing on exactly that. Additionally I took a look at your colours and came up with this.


It is still not done, there has to be some work done. Specially around the bottom reflection highlight.

Thank you for the feedback, DrTripwire - I totally agree with you!

I made some more edits, slowly fixing more and more edgy parts and adding more depth here and there.



-Changed the pattern and behavior of the
 dark shadow on the eyelid.
-Multiple lines were fixed: Eyelid, reflection forms, [...]
-Some more minor changes, adding more fur here and there, [...]


Edited by Lakelezz - 08 January 2015 at 1:52pm

What's the green bit in the upper left corner? If it's the background, then that means your squirrel's head is too small.

I think the colors you are using for the fur are really oversaturated. Here's a quick edit:

idk the eye colour looks pretty natural to me? don't understand what your meaning.

I made some more (rather little) changes:-Lower eye-reflection fixes-Some fur changes and some cleanups I am slowly tending to upload it to the gallery. However I would like to ask for your opinion on the piece :)Any suggestions left or problems I simply missed out?



Edited by Lakelezz - 14 January 2015 at 2:18pm

I do not think so, Limes.
However I am open for all kind of ideas and here is an example of how it would look with a lower saturation but the same colours.

Old:




Edited by Lakelezz - 15 January 2015 at 8:57am

Oh, I tried to fix that! I never really thought about it, haha. Thanks!
Additionally the colour has been tweaked again.



I simply let the fur get longer at that place where the sharp eye-lid corner used to be. However that might be removed later since I am not sure if either like it or not.

Any thoughts?

Some more tuning!
I reworked the fur again, which is a complex thing to handle but I am almost completely happy with it by now.



I want to finish it soon - any suggestions? Did I miss something critical?

However with what to replace that sticking out fur? It is originally meant to represent the brighter area around the eye which actually even larger in relation to the eye.

I will try to tackle the "too symmetrical" part later, though I am not sure what to do with the fur around the eye for now.

Thanks for your feedback, eishiya :)

Any suggestions?

Thank you for your ideas, Iscalio!

First of all the references are not really references.
The piece was made without them. Later on I started to study on human and animal eyes (especially ones similar to squirrels).

Concerning the acorn: The acorn is meant to be in the focus :)
Also the background of the acorn is not meant to be the sky. I can not think about many situations where the squirrel can actually see the sky behind the acorn. That would mean there are not many trees or it is near to some cliff. However this is just some ecological approach.

The eye reflection is actually not a real one. As I said above: On this distance you will be able to see the light source and it wont be rendered roughly. This is what I did not do. The reflection is rather there to add depth to the eye and performs quite abstract.

However I like your last edit specially when I ignore ecology, haha.
On the other hand I cant see where you removed the sticking out fur around the eye, hmm. I must be blind, haha.
Oh, also I guess adding the whiskers will make it rather harder to read. At least I feel like they are not that necessary but thanks to remind me of them - I totally forgot :P

Overall I will take your ideas into account and think a little bit about it. On the other hand I still mainly worry about the "eyebrows", haha.

If anything doesn't look as good to me it's the acorn itself, maybe because you're faking the light in the eye or maybe because you're making the shape an "acorn" shape instead of a real acorn.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd move on to the next thing. This looks pretty good and it seems like you're caught up in the polishing of something that's already quite well finished, but you're not really getting further big improvements for your efforts.

I agree with Iscalio on the acorn's shape. The way you drew it is rather flat against a rounded, reflective surface. Even the grass adds to that. If you ever consider changing the acorn, I suggest photoshopping it or something to enlarge the mid-portion of the eye so it gives the optical view. Great job on your progress though!