Another Anime Style Pixel Drawing, Stage One

This is just the first stage of my pixel art/drawing/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it of Black standing against the sunset. Right now, he's pretty much the only thing that looks good: everything else is substandard shaded.

Eventually, this drawing will look so good, it's amazing, but right now, I just want some C+CC plus maybe some tips.

BTW I just use normal MSPaint for this.


Stage One: Black is finished and shaded, just need to add life to everything else.

I don't want to sound mean, but you're getting way ahead of yourself by saying that you can make this look amazing.

Anatomy: The shape of the head is very strange, and it is too big for the rest of his body. The top of the head seems to be missing. His eyebrow is too close to the edge of his face, and it is at an almost vertical angle... His mouth is on his cheek, almost below his football-shaped ear. The neck is way too thick, and seems to come out from where his mouth should be.

The rest of his body is very squashed looking. His chest, stomach and hips are almost nonexistant. He has no shoulders, and his arms and legs are just short stumps. His hand looks like a tentacle, and his feet look like elephant feet forced into a human's shoes.

Coloring: I like bright colors, but you seem to have little to no sense of color coordination or contrast. The colors just don't work together very well.

A lot of the shadows are in the wrong places, and they're not dark enough. With the character standing so close to such a strong light source, almost all of his body that is facing the viewer would be covered in dark shadows. The shadow that he is casting on the ground starts way out in front of him, and some parts of him don't even cast any shadows when they should.

I like the idea behind the picture, it has potential to be a very dramatic shot, but you need to work a lot harder on your technique. Also, try to get better programs. There are a lot of free art programs floating around that work very well.

KFP pretty much summed it up there.
It is not very appealing, so yeah.

You definitely need to practice more. Sorry.

Ohh yeah i like this Pic^w^
Nice Pixal skill you got! Cool hair.

JESUS CHRIST GUYS LIGHTEN UP! This is pretty good your still learning you used shading and it looks pretty good. i really like how you made the sword pointing away from the guy and the sky's shades. this is really nice keep on practicing

CRITICISM IS ALLOWED, JESUS CHRIST!

I agree with everything Kentucky-Fried Panda said.

I think the things you should work on are shading, proportion, and facial structure. Just keep at it, and it'll look a lot nicer! :]

This post has been edited by Deaths In Birmingham on Feb 26 2007, 05:02 PM

personally im getting sick of anime as an art style, thank god you haven't spent too much time investing in that style, you have enough room start developing your "own" style, and id highly recommend that you do so if you want to make a lasting impression with your work.

This post has been edited by Wash your hands man! on Feb 26 2007, 05:25 PM

You're not really helping, WYHM.. This is simply practice work.

Yeah, like KFP said, you definantly have problems with the picture. Suggestion: I recommend you work on contrast (how light and darks work).

although to be honest, I'd like to see people to attempt something other than the "cookie-cutter" anime style that I tend to see everywhere. I've seen quite of bit of unique anime styles that separate themselves from others, but unfortunately most of that is overshadowed by the same style i've seen a bazillion times before or a slight variation of it (which is probably where part of the "All anime looks the same." argument stems from)

one thing i do to help expand my style is to have [b]multiple[b] influences. like for example my art has been influenced by these people at one point or another:

Preston Blair
Tex Avery
Robert Clampett
Chuck Jones
Don Bluth
Joe Barbera
John Kricfalusi
Ralph Bashki
Craig McCracken
Genndy Tartakovsky
Walt Kelly
Jeff Smith
Robert Crumb
Matt Groeining
Jessica Borutski
Aliki Theofilopoulos
Lis Boriss
Jen Seng
Andrew Dickman
Kyle Carrozza
Arica Houy
Lauren Faust
Thom Enriquez
Tom Owens
Tony Siruno
Whoever made the Tiny Toons/Animaniacs Style
some other peeps

personally id rather not be influenced by one or a couple of people :P (although i admit Preston Blair had a rather large influence on my style so far)

fo sho

other than this mindless ramble id have to agree with KFP

This post has been edited by RageMario on Feb 26 2007, 09:06 PM