canvas is too big

you wouldn't pick up a trumpet for this first time and flip to an etude.
you wouldn't get into shape from fat and try to bench 800 pounds.

and it is unwise to try to learn to pixel on your ASTRONOMICALLY large canvas.

I'm sorry this was your introduction to PJ. I don't know what crawled up Friend's butt. However, PJ gets a lot of beginners that all make the same mistakes over and over again (and over, and over, and over). It can be grating for a veteran to have his advice hand-waved by a newcomer for the 1000th time, so unfortunately sometimes patience runs dry.

Unfortunately I don't have many constructive criticisms for you at this point. The portrait looks good, but as a personal preference thing, I'm not sold on the darker skintones. I feel he looks more dirty than in low light.

Friend:
I mentioned that I dug this project up and wanted to refine it. I had started it long before my first submission and our ensuring discussion, and posted it after correcting some really grating mistakes for 10 or so minutes, since yeah, this'll be a long going project and this is a WIP thread. I should have made clearer that this specific project really is about refinement and putting to use what I learned. I absolutely agree that there might be problems with the dithering, but I honestly it was more a try to texture his face than anything, since the actor I'm trying to portray isn't silky smooth either. I'm really torn on that part and will experiment around a bit as I clean everything up, again, taking your points into consideration.

You're assuming I didn't know about these techniques and couldn't use them, which is part of my problem. I came to understood that a lot of my work used to walk the border between oekaki and pixel art. Alright, that doesn't mean that I can't work clearer overall. I tended to get sketchy when I got lazy or when I felt a part wasn't important, but I know how to work clearly. "Clear" and "dirty" sounds weird for this, but I think you know what I mean by that. Basically I'm saying that you made me see that I have to defeat my laziness and clean up my messes, and I'm doing that, and I still stand by your treatment of me being condescending. I don't want to be whiny, but I feel like you haven't even took a look at my gallery and take my talk of efforts as empty words. At least that's what I take out of the way you've been talking to me. Please take a look at any of my completed and accepted pieces before juding me on my first entry and a WIP of an even older picture alone.

Mr.Hai-
I'm a bit confused about the entire situation to be honest. Thanks for coming in and helping me stop thinking I was going crazy.

About what you said about the picture..
 I feel the dark background might be to blame and have no idea why I even included it anymore. I guess I'll go with transparency or a solid color shadow later and maybe change the color up. I feel his skin's a bit oddly shaded, too, but at that point in the movies story, he probably hasn't showered a while either, hah.


Edited by cmmrc - 18 March 2015 at 4:19pm

Listen, I honestly appreciate what you both are telling me and understand what you mean. I just plainly don't enjoy tiny canvases as much as bigger ones, but I know their value and merit, which is why the next finished picture I did after this was 100x100 and I've been working on a 80x160px picture these last few hours. What I didn't seem to have made clear is that I am planning to do one big piece over the span of some weeks or even months, slowly refining it, while doing a lot of smaller pieces for practice on the side to then transfer what I've learned into the big project. Then I want to update this thread when I feel you can see big improvements over former WIPs to evaluate my process over the transformation of one piece. That's why I'm going on and on, because I see your point, and am doing what you two are asking of me while at the same time getting out of the habit of abandoning projects.

I will do him in 32x32 after I work some more on the self-portrait I mentioned. I experimented with distinct geometric shapes on this, but that's just what it is so far, experimenting around; I started with an awful palette originally on purpose to force myself to do something else.

This is a WIP of mentioned picture. Please mind that this is just me playing around.


This is the last picture I finished:


This is the first picture I made after I got my initial advice:


I feel that this has devolved into a big misunderstanding, and I hope I could clear that up a bit. I'm low on sleep because I spent close to the entirety of the last week working and refining a lot of small pieces, which is why I'm reacting so agitated.


EDIT:
Here's the 32x32 you asked for. I tried to not stylize too much and stay close to the original with this one.

EDIT 2:
 wrong file.


EDIT 3:

This is how far I've come with my experiment in shapes for today. My neck is stiff and work is starting back up tomorrow, I'm off to bed for now.



Edited by cmmrc - 18 March 2015 at 6:29pm

I'm glad we could finally clear this up.

Personally, I just hate working with vectors and am an avid (mediocre) digital painter. Here's a quick study I did two weeks back: http://s26.postimg.org/8m9o6e809/24022015firstblood.jpg
I think when you look at my ink sketches it becomes obvious where my weird decisions in shading and dithering are coming from: http://s26.postimg.org/q5t2aln2h/35_Summer.jpg
I generally tend to use stiff patterns and textures, but I'm in the process of getting over that for a while now. I like the look, but I know how bad it can be for form.
But liking the look (aesthetic is more fitting) is mainly why I got into pixel art- That, KOF and Metal Slug, as with most people I think. Not of the shading especially, just of the general output and a clear and precise pixel aesthetic. I always understood it as precise "digital drawing" instead of digital painting, and in my head the latter was more about form over lines and implications. I've seen some pieces that proved me wrong on this site already and am trying to implement what I learned into what I do myself. Still, I'm a nut for explicit detail, and the possibility to properly work it in (which pixel art gives me for some almost indecipherable pen sketches, which is how I started my Shub-Niggurath piece) while still trying to give an organic overall impression. I enjoy tiny, hard, detail work and correcting to bits, and it's probably important to mention that I often base my work around the concept that I'm more than okay with correcting and refining it for aeons. I'll try to make different focuses count with different pieces, though- I mean, that'll likely be the most fun, too.

I reread the section about banding and will work on that in the future. I think I often make mistakes there when I'm not going for AA, but really harsh lines or stylisation, but technical learning should ALWAYS come before stylisizing. I tried to tackle that a bit already in the self-portrait, but not really conciously. With the green outline on the picture for this week's challenge, it felt sort of necessary to make the outlines of his legs and arms really visible, as well as him needing this aura to be able to breathe in space.
But otherwise, thanks for pointing it out. Also, thank you for acknowledging and complimenting my progress.

I will open up my other threads specifically for a lot of small projects in a few days.. As I mentioned, work is starting back up again, so I just can't be as insanely active as I've been this last week. But this site has been in my bookmarks for close to three years now anyway, so I doubt I'll forget about it too quickly..

EDIT:
Here is an update of the self-portrait for today. Gotta get to work now.


EDIT 2:
Oh man, this is hypnotic. Couldn't resist working some more on the nose. But now I'm really off.


EDIT 3:

Found some more time to work on it a bit. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'm keeping a close eye on banding- as far as this works with this picture's concept.




Edited by cmmrc - 19 March 2015 at 5:27pm

Now I feel bad about having uploaded this already, but I kinda sorta stayed up too late again after work, hahah.

Today, with a semi-fresh look on it, I see what you mean about it being overdone, especially with the background (I feel like the little triangle in the top right corner looks more like a mistake than something done on purpose).
I tried to leave certain parts as bare as I could but then they started to feel empty and badly defined, urgh. I think I should delete some shapes there for a start and build off from there. It's hard to keep transparency in mind with this style though, since the background technically is also made of shapes and it just doesn't look like it while actually working on it.
I would agree on the nose if I didn't change it due to likeness. It looked better before, but just not like my nose. :/
If you feel you can change this greatly for the better with some banding edits, I'd be really thankful for them. Thanks for the compliment, too!



Edited by cmmrc - 20 March 2015 at 4:43am

My two cents are your pixelling looks great, but your composition could use some work. There isn't enough space between the elements, so the picture feels cluttered. The monster is framed on all sides by different things that don't relate to one another, plus the values of several elements make them appear to recede in depth rather than stick out. See the leftmost branch for an example. Try sketching the composition a bit, and then perhaps make a thumbnail of the piece. I'm looking forward to see this project progress!

Barely had any time to work on it other than fixing some of the composition issues (I hope). Tiny changes, but I felt they helped a bit already. Let's see how much (if anything) I'll get done this weekend.



Update:
Took some time to continue a bit this evening.
Took the bright green out of the background. Might change the bright lightsource on the right to just more darker trees. The outlines of the new foreground trees are on a new layer because I'm not sure if they're really helping yet. Trying to fix the composition by adding more and clarifying some things visually. Not sure if that's working at all or even a good idea to begin with.


Update:



Edited by cmmrc - 13 April 2015 at 7:16am

Its not the size of the canvas that matters.
What matters is the control of the pixels and generally speaking the bigger the canvas the lazier some get.
Not one person has ever complained about the canvas size on THIS.http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/61838.htm

I've been gone for a while to work on some mockups for a game concept course at university. I study Illustration and Media design, for anyone who's wondering what that's about. Well, they are finally (after literally months of planning, leveldesign, concepts, and working on assets) at a point that I feel okay with showing them for further feedback on here.
Some disclaimers, though:

a) They are HUGE. HUGE. I've spent at least 4 hours each day (mostly more around 10) these past few months working on them, though.
b)The deadline is next monday. Thus, I can't change anything TOO radical.
c) Item placements and their number and kind are out of my hand now. Each piece of furniture (even windows, doors, lamps) are meant to be usable items in-game. Their number, kind, interactions and positioning have been done back when I still had other people in the course working on the project and are out of my power. Basically this means I can't add or delete anything inside the house.
d) The wallpaper is tacky. It's 1951, mamie pink was everywhere, and my research only came up with horribly ugly wallpapers, so I thought I'd go for historical accuracy. You know what I mean.
e) It's a truckload of colors, but each mockup for the game, no matter which screen, shares the same ~80 color palette.

I need dire, dire help with the river. I have no idea how to make it look like a river, bog, creek. Especially without animation and with the colors I've got.

But okay, here they are:



C&C most appreciated.



Edited by cmmrc - 02 July 2015 at 3:00am

Thanks a lot for these two pictures! Most references I was looking at really weren't helping that much to be honest and just adding to my confusion. I'll get to it asap.

Hahah, yeah, thanks again. Now that search term seems to obvious I want to slap myself.
The ones I found just googling "bog", "Creek", "River", "Fluss", "Bach" were mostly along the lines of these :  http://openwalls.com/image/264/small_river_1920x1200.jpg http://miriadna.com/desctopwalls/images/max/Forest-small-river.jpg http://https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2013/10/17/14/17/bach-196960_640.jpg

Looking helpful at first, but actually not that much.

Haven't done anything yet because the heat is killing me and my poor pc. I'll post updates as soon as they're done, though.

Well, the presentation at uni is over (no idea how I fared yet), but I doubt any of the pictures are close to any level that'd warrant posting them on PJ yet.

Current versions:

Your pixelling has improved which is great.
This last pixel is slightly over pixelled making some bits a bit muddy.
The center leaves have a slight pillow-shaded look to them.
The true white color seems like a poor choice. Maybe yeallow that white a bit?

"Upload tomorrow", yeah right..

So obviously life off the computer really took some twists and turns and demanded my full attention for these past two months. I couldn't find the time to continue on the project posted above, and am still in limbo due to moving to a new place next week. But I've tried to get into the loop again with some practice:

There are obviously still quite some problems to fight through. I've used reference, but tried to steer away from it with the actual facial features and details which is where most of the construction errors stem from. But that's why I'm doing this practice anyway.