First portrait attempt - please help

[Mimi]

I have to admit I'm not much of an artist so I didn't get very far. I started with the hair. I am having
a hard time making the portrait look like the picture. Please help.

Here is the picture


and here is the portrait I was working on.

[Asmo X]

you're trying to make a portrait from scratch. Do not do this. Try to combine elements from existing portraits. I'm sure if you looked through the database you could find a combination of portraits that would give you all the features you want.

[Mimi]

I tried to do what you suggested. I got her face from alma because she favors her. The hair is
more difficult to reproduce since not many characters in the game have brown hair and most
of them are male. I tried to recolor ramza's bangs but it ended up looking horrible. Any help
on her hair would be appreciated.

[Jon]

Don't worry about the hair color just yet, look for hair that has the shape you want. Colors can be replaced literally in seconds. Also, you can only have 16 colors (15 if you count the gray background). Portraits are actually my weakness, but I think what Asmo said is the best way to start. Never make something from scratch unless you are really skilled (which you said you're not). Welcome to FFH btw.

Edit: Is that Mist from FE without a nose by any chance?

[Mimi]

Thanks Asmo and Jon for the helpful advice. I tried to put togother different hairstyles to make one similar but
the combinations looked so horrible I just chopped off Alma's hair and recolored it. I know it is not good enough
yet.

This is what it looks like. The first one I kept the eyes brown. The second one I recolored them blue.



If you have any suggestions as how to improve it, please tell me. Since this is my first portait, I need all
the help I can get.

[SilvasRuin]

You're going to need more than two colors to give the hair any depth.  Once you do manage more colors for the hair, you'll need to have softer transitions between light and shadow.  If you keep the transitions as drastic as they are now, it will not look good.

There is still a brown pixel in the blue eye.  Farthest left column, I think it's the third pixel up.

[Lijj]

Ya if you can add 1 more brown and use the darkest shade more in the hair to give it more depth. Keep it up

[Zozma]

stop , i havent read anything so far. but based on the current visual i see that you can combine at least 2 skin tones into the hair color! rember the fft lighting!!

[Mimi]

Thanks for all your help. I took your advice and tried to put an extra darker shade for the hair but that did not turn out so well. So, I used a lighter shade instead.

Here is what it looks like.



I would appreciate any help or advice. You all have been very helpful.

Edit: The pic is really a self-portrait; but now that I think about. It does resemble Mist from Fire Emblem.

[Jon]

Ha! I thought it was Mist, Ike's lil sister! Anyway, now that you have the shape of hair you want, you really need to study already existing sprite portraits and sorta immitate the way the lighting hits them on the head. I've noticed that usually they use the lightest color (your lightest brown here) really only on strands to highlight bits and pieces, to give it a shiny, glossy feel. Then the next lightest brown, which should be only a bit darker covers most of the upper part of the head, like the mass of hair getting hit most by the sun, but not directly (that is where the lightest shade goes). Then comes the 3rd darkest which usually gives the shape of the hair strands and then comes the darkest color which shows where hair overlays hair underneath it. (I hope this isn't confusing you and also that I am not writing crap here...) Also, you have still a brown pixel on her right eye now, 4th one up. Can't see it too clearly, but also the same (4th pixel up) on the left eye. And are those the exact same blues from here clothes? If not, use those blues. One important rule is to always use (as a beginner) existing colors from the game, funny I'm saying this because I never follow this rule to begin with, but in theory you should. Good luck!

[Mimi]

Thanks for all your helpful advice Jon. I tried shading the hair with the lightest color and I think it looks better now.
After that, I tried shading the hair with the darkest color; but I could never get it to look right. Here is a pic of
the portrait before I shaded the hair with the lightest color and after.



The one on the left is the before portrait. The one on the right is the after portrait.

BTW:  I did use the same color in her eyes as in her clothes.

[Jon]

Its definitely getting there and this isn't bad for a first portrait at all. Also its good that you used the blues from the clothes. I wish I could help you but actually I am not so great at portraits. When you are coloring this do you have the original Alma also open as reference? I have no idea what you should do for the end of the hair, but the top still needs a bit of shading. Right now I see 1 light color, the medium color and 1 dark color in the hair. You might want to add more of the darkest brown in parts of the hair, just to give it a bit of shading variation. Use other portraits as reference too, like chapter 2-3 Ramza, Izlude, and the Fur shop owner (haha just kidding, he has no hair). Imitate how those characters hair is colored. And I am guessing the further down the hair goes, the darker it gets, so you are gonna probably want to use a lot of the 2nd darkest brown near the bottom and the darkest brown to sorta give the shape of the hair. Good luck!

[Mimi]

I did have the alma picture up as a reference but it didn't help much with the back of the hair since her hair is
braided.  I did try shading the back of the hair. It made her hair look shorter. So I gave her longer hair.

This is what it looks like.



here is the portrait that goes along with it.



Thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.

PS: I like the new dark knight sprite you made. It looks cool. How long did it take you to learn how to
make sprites? I would like to make my own sprites but pixel art seems much harder than making portraits.

[Jon]

The Dark Knight was really easy, I just changed ch.2-3 Ramza's colors all to the purple colors originally, painted on Gafgarion's helmet also with the purple colors and then finally changed the purples to Smash's Cavalier's blues. Took about 4 hours for total completion. The Cannoneer however was a nightmare, but thats another story. I think there are a bunch of tutorials on here teaching you how to sprite if you are interested, they were mostly written by people better than me, so read those if you want to learn the craft of spriting. As for the portrait, it seems to be getting much better, but you gotta change the shading. You still unfortunetly need to use more of the darkest brown and more of the second darkest brown. Portraits are so hard...

[MiKeMiTchi]

The hair definitely needs some shading make-over.
Try getting hair from other pre-existing portraits.

[Kagebunji]

Yeah, I agree with both Jon and Mike, I wonder where original Alma's hair shading dissappeard to...

[Mimi]

The original Alma's hair shading was on the before picture. There I just recolored her hair. Could someone please help me with the hair shading on the portrait since all of my attempts have been unsuccessful.  I would really appreciate it.

[SilvasRuin]

If that IS using Alma's shading (... are you sure you didn't lower the amount of colors it originally had?), then what you lost in transition was the lower amount of contrast.  Your shades are drastically different from each other in comparison.

(Fricking dangit, I've lost that link to the site that had a copy of each palette of each sprite, and I'm not currently where I can access the game data, so I can't check for sure.)

[Jon]

If you don't like the hair color, I can change it for you in an instant, but you must describe then what color you want exactly. The hair is also a bit shortened, hope you don't mind Mimi. I think my portrait skills are improving, stuff like this really helps. Side note: You cannot use this in game, only for the site.

[Zozma]

oh more than 16 colors?