First portrait attempt - please help

[Zozma]

lol no, i just recognize the design of asellus, she has the most potential of any character on that game being the only human/mystic half which gives her access to the "special" catagory that normally only the mec characters have

[Jon]

Hey, thats how I get most things done, look at other sprites from completely different games. Especially for the portraits, Fire Emblem has better portraits when it comes to the body, I use those as reference. They also have nice hair designs

[Mimi]

Thanks Lijj! The heads look great.

[Mimi]

I've been working on putting portraits together and trying to make avatars.
These are what I've finished so far:

spoiler

Male Soldier (a recolor of priest hair + monk + archer)
[attachment=2:21c9c6rz]soldier.bmp[/attachment:21c9c6rz]

Female Alchemist  (chemist + summoner)
[attachment=1:21c9c6rz]alchemistsite.bmp[/attachment:21c9c6rz]

Male Wizard Unmasked  (wizard + calculator)
[attachment=0:21c9c6rz]magus.bmp[/attachment:21c9c6rz]

Please tell me what you think of these.
I'm a beginner at this so I would appreciate any helpful comments.  

[mav]

Not too shabby. This is a great way to learn the fundamentals of portrait-making. One thing to remember is that simply copying over and replacing colors isn't always enough--you will occasionally need to re-shade parts of the face. It's evident on all three portraits, but let's look at portrait with the red hair: the bandanna needs to be darker where it meets the hair. Also keep proportions and angles in mind: the neck on the redhead could probably be a little bit longer and the hat on the Calculator/Black Mage shouldn't be at such a slant. When it comes to hats, you need to make sure that the face and the hat are the same angle, unless you're intentionally going for a weird look.

Again, good starts on all three. Keep at it, cause these skills are all you need to make some decent custom characters. Good luck to ya.

[Jon]

I will be honest with just like Mav, the last two don't look right. Especially the Calculator Black Mage, his hat is angled wrong (sorry for repeating that). If you angle that correctly so its more flat, then you will need to add the 3rd darkest or 4th darkest tone of skin under the brim, but that also is a bit tricky. The first portrait looks like it could have some potential here actually: its not too bad. It needs a bit of shading underneath the bandana and where the hair would cast a shadow on the bandana. Are those 16 colors on the first portrait? If not, an easy way to reduce colors would be to use the teal from his clothes on the bandana, or blues on the clothes, so vice versa. I like the first one the best, reminds me of Fire Emblem characters.

[Cheetah]

These are definite improvements over your last attempt Mimi. I am going to merge this topic with your other one though, since they are both topics about your personal portrait projects.

[Lijj]

I like all of these Mimi. Keep it up. Yes a little shadow under the hair etc. I like the Calculator BM combo; though, as they said about the angle. It could work if the hat on the sprite was tilted as so.

[Mimi]

Thanks for all your helpful comments. I know I need to work on the shading because shading has always been one of my weaknesses. I did a little extra work on the two male portraits.

Here is the new soldier
[attachment=0:u34149d7]soldier2.bmp[/attachment:u34149d7]

Here is the new Wizard unmasked
[attachment=1:u34149d7]magus2.bmp[/attachment:u34149d7]

Thanks for all the positive comments. I will try to get better at shading and make more portraits soon.

[Mari]

The first one looks a lot better, yeah. But as you said, you've still got a little work to do! If you have any colours left over I'd try another darker shade under the hair, near the top to help with the depth!

And as for the second, the hat looks a lot better, except it still seems to be at an angle. Not the same angle like before, but like the hat is facing more left than the head is. (The portrait's left, not ours.)
Maybe it's just me.

I'm jealous, in any case. I wanna start working on spriting but it's not working out so well in my favour. =P
So I'll stick to numbers and letters!

[Lijj]

Wait a second here.. the pixels are distorted. it needs to be redrawn over due to the smudging apparent from the transformed angles etc.

[mav]

Lijj is right. Remember a couple things: you should always aim to stay within the 16 color limit and you should always keep your edits to scale. On the first portrait you've got to get more shades on the bandanna. The placement of shadows is accurate enough, you just need to fill it in better.

[Mimi]

I tried to fix the wizard's hat by using the alternate wizard hat instead.
This is what I came up with.
[attachment=0:23chugto]magus3.bmp[/attachment:23chugto]

The portraits haven't been reduced to 16 colors yet. I thought I'd get
them to look decent before I would work on the colors. Thanks for your
help everyone.

[Jon]

I think the wizards hat should be dropped actually by a few pixels downward, so the brim is closer to his eyes. Its not bad, in fact I like the brown parts on the far left of it, makes it look like its made out of straw or something like that. Just needs to be lowered, I think the best would be right above the eyebrows. Good luck!

[mav]

What happened to his hair on this version? The hat doesn't look like it fits either. A lot of your shading is too linear too and you're not using enough shades to make realistic shadows. It's leading to a loss of depth. Go back to the hat you used in the last version and manually remove the blurs you created.

[Mimi]

I have two new versions of the wizard. Please tell me which one you like the best.

The original wizard with less blur:
[attachment=1:3ix9k59x]magus2a.bmp[/attachment:3ix9k59x]

The last wizard with the hat that comes down lower:
[attachment=0:3ix9k59x]magus4.bmp[/attachment:3ix9k59x]

[Kill_Bones]

Definately First one, it actually looks "wizardy". The second looks like a tribal hat tbh..

[mav]

Using the sharpening tool is not exactly what I meant. You can't just use tools, filters, and fancy programs to do your portrait work. This is still pixel art, after all.

[Mimi]

I'm just a beginner so redrawing each pixel on the hat would be too much of a challenge for me. That is why I sharpened it up a little bit. I guess I'll put the wizard on hold untill I get better at drawing. Here are some improvements I made to the other portraits.

The new Alchemist (now based on the 20 yr old woman + chemist):
[attachment=0:5nkebm6v]alchemist2p.bmp[/attachment:5nkebm6v]

The new Soldier:
[attachment=1:5nkebm6v]soldier3.bmp[/attachment:5nkebm6v]

Please tell me what you think.

[Jon]

The Soldier looks almost finished, just 2 things: There is a fly on his neck! Look closely! Also, the hair right above his ear where it forms sort of a cresant moon shape needs a bit of lightning. I like it, its almost done. Something is wrong with the 20 year old Alchemist, I think her hair has just vanished on the one braid. Still, this looks good.