I tried making a woman and using aa:

Thanks for the help cure, I looked at some references and tried to fix the things you pointed out:

I'm not sure how to fix the chin or add lips, when I tried they looked really weird. I hope just fixing the mistakes is okay, I really don't want to start over on this.

I used this reference mostly:

I'll start over and look at references more closely.

you need to pay attention to the contours of the face as well as negative space. anatomy is something more easily learned through studying anatomical guides and sketching, pixel art is a tedious medium. by all means move forward with this piece, but if you want to understand anatomy you need to do studies (gesture drawings, contour line drawing, as well as practicing shading the planes of the face). This means getting a sketchpad and finding anatomy references to practice, practice, practice.

here are some examples of what you should be doing.
here is another example of how to draw a head.
here is a link to Andrew Loomis's drawing guides.

Here is an edit:

---> 



The changes I made are explained in my first post.



Edited by cure - 01 November 2012 at 2:21pm

the hair is flat, it hugs the skull and has no volume. the nose is still too strong, it should not form a straight line all the way up the face. observe your own nose. does it not project further at the bottom than where it meets the eyes? look at a picture of a skull to see how the area between the eyes should be recessed. the jaw/chin is still too strong for a female, to emphasize the femininity the chin should come to more of a point, the jaw as a whole should be less square and more triangular. the side of the current face is a uniform curve. look at your reference: the cheekbone juts out, then the contour curves in at the eye, then back out at the brow. again, look at a skull to see why the skin stretches over the skull in this way. the neck is still kinda thick for a woman, and it is just a cylinder. research the muscles of the neck, you are neglecting the trapezius muscles and the sternocleinomastoids. You cannot just know "neck", you must know the muscles that make up the neck. the neck is also too far forward, remember that the spine attaches to the base of the skull and the jaw juts forward from the skull (and therefore the neck as well). also google 'thirds of the face'. this rule states that the distance from the hairline to the brow, the distance from the brow to the bottom of the nose, and the distance from the bottom of the nose to the chin should all be equal. Right now the forehead is too short, because the cranium is too small. On a fully constructed face, the eyes should be right in the middle, your eyes are too high (due, as stated, to the undersized cranium).

It's looking better, but you definitely need to study that drawing book, studying it will be more helpful than any crit you'll get from me. As it is you're still being too timid with your edits, you really need to tear it apart and rebuild it in a completely new way.


Edited by cure - 01 November 2012 at 4:21pm

Thanks jalonso:

I changed the hair, nose, ear, neck, and some other stuff.
Edit: I think I might have made the nose worse...

Edited by Andrew-M - 05 November 2012 at 5:45pm

Thanks for the help jalonso:

Something like this?

Edit:I changed it more:


Edited by Andrew-M - 07 November 2012 at 6:59pm

Does anyone see anything else I should change? I think this might be finished now but I want to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Edit: I changed a few more things:


Edited by Andrew-M - 12 November 2012 at 5:54pm

Here, a quick edit.
Simplify your sprite Andrew.
Didn't try too much to resemble the woman on the picture but I tried to make your sprite more feminine.


Was bored so I edited some more...




Edited by Alex Pang - 13 November 2012 at 6:25am

Thank you all for the help, this is what i've changed so far:

I tried drawing some women from the link cure posted and they looked really terrible. I'm going to practice anatomy and drawing women every day, i'll also keep working on this and i'll only post an update when I feel i've made large improvements.

Edited by Andrew-M - 13 November 2012 at 9:35pm

Thanks dpixel:

I changed most of the colors, the hair, the left side of the face and some other things.

Look at my or cures edits. The most important thing is not the colors right now, but rather the planes,the big flat surfaces on her face that are left undefined and blend too much together. Think carefully where you want to place those highlights. When used carefully they can bring the realism in your painting to a whole new level. In your case they are overused.

Since the picture is quite small, making dark lines like this (if you're trying to make it realistic) isn't very helpful, you'll need to play around with AA and lighting.

You should really work on the nose and eyes in my opinion, maybe the mouth as well. And if you wish, edit all of the face proportions, after that's done, perhaps play with the lighting source and its strength.

Thanks for the help Night and thanks Zeratanus for explaining what you meant:

I'm not sure if I fixed the lips.

Edited by monotov - 16 November 2012 at 4:08pm

Now, I've gotta say this is a substantial improvement.
Aren't you you glad you worked on this and didn't call it quits last week?
I think the color you are using for AA is too green.
Also the top left and top right portions of her hair is a little too uniform. Not sure how to explain this, but its a little too line-oriented? Darkening the lightest brown can help remove that harsh contrast of the lightest and medium brown in her hair. EDIT: (But not too much! You don't want the browns of your first wip image. The shades of browns in those early ones ~all look the same)

Edited by crozier - 16 November 2012 at 7:28pm

Thanks for the help crozier:

I really am happy i've kept working on this, i've learned a lot about anatomy and shading.

Dpixel, i've tried more than a couple times trying to add highlights to the left side of the hair. I just think those highlights have way too much contrast (especially for this size). The eyes are also my favorite part of this and I don't think I should change them like how they are in your edit. I hope it's okay to leave those things the same, I just prefer how they look right now...

Thanks for the help Alex Pang:

Edit: This is finished now. Thanks again for all the help.

Edited by Andrew-M - 18 November 2012 at 1:24pm