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[Shook]

Well, you've definitely got the ideas down, and the facial expressions are pretty good too. However, despite the obviously cartoony style, a bit of anatomy would benefit you. A humans legs, for instance, compose almost half the standing persons height. Also, idle arms generally hang pretty close to the body; you don't need pixels of empty space between them and the torso (not at that scale, anyways). In order to show this without it being a super wide torso, you're going to need some sort of shading or outline. Also, the shoulders should be 3 heads wide and the height should be 7-8 heads tall.



Mr Blankface the Manly Man demonstrates. Now, i'm pretty bad at human anatomy myself, so you should probably study it a bit yourself. Just a bit. It's not necessary to know the exact location of every single muscle and bone, but having a general idea helps tremendously. Once you got that down, it becomes way easier to make cartoony things (which i personally enjoy more than hyper realistic things)! And when i say general idea, i mean like:



Really fucking general. That's basically the extent of my knowledge over the human skeleton, not counting a few mahscles. (geology =/= biology)
Also, shading. It doesn't have to be super advanced, you can just be like "RIGHT SIDE IS DARK" and then work your way from there.



It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. For more info on shading, look here: http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/shading.html
Do note though, at the scale i've shown, facial expressions are super hard to do. To include them more easily, you're better off either doing what you do already (making heads bigger) or just drawing the whole thing bigger.

Right now i'm just hoping i don't sound like a huge ass, because i don't like being critical.
In other news, i fiddled a bit more with the SHINY VEPONZ.



In particular, the spear is now in full length (almost 2 meters), and there's a new EVUL DAGGER by a different artificer. One cut from its accursed blade and you have a heavily necrotic wound (i.e. rotting and gangrene) to deal with, which is really bad news in a medieval setting (unless you have a super good healer nearby).

[Powder Miner]

Durpzilla vs Ampersand: What would happen?

Cyborg Hellbear Bazooka Calvalry vs. EPRD: What happens?

[Shook]

The world explodes in both cases.



I'd place my money on Ampersand and EPRD, since Amp is an abyssal demon and EPRD is powered by one (which, in essence, makes him one). Durpzilla will likely cause some problems for Amp though, what with his breath weapon being as powerful as it is.

Cyborg Hellbear Bazooka Calvalry, however, is utterly outclassed in that matchup. It merely has awesome going for it (plus a hellbear generally sucks if you're not a giganormous robot dragon), while EPRD is, well, A GIGANORMOUS ROBOT DRAGON. And on top of that, he's powered by an angry abyssal demon. That combination sucks to be on the wrong side of, and by wrong side i mean anything that isn't him. It's fortunate that he'd rather hang around in his cave.

Also, i have something SUPER BIG in the making, but since it's not finished, here's a dubious attempt at a color illusion.



The light squares on the lower right side are the exact same color as the dark squares on top!!!

[Powder Miner]

The squares on top look lighter to me >.>

Hmm... Larry or JAMES THE ANGRY LASER EEL (Whenever I say his name, I do it in a melodic voice. Because it fits perfectly.)

[Shook]

I'm hoping you're referring to these squares, since those are the ones that should look different. :U (though i'm super bad at making illusions, so i wouldn't be surprised if it's a fluke)

Also, tricky question. Since Larry can't really be killed (you can read why on my dA site HE HE HE), i'd hand him the victory. But if you don't take that into account, JAMES would probably take the first place, since a plant like Larry wouldn't exactly be at home in the ocean.

Oh and here's a sneak peek of that super big thing i'm working on, since i have nothing else that's pixelated.



HEH. Still have a lot to do, since i want to add a pair of burly guards too. Oh, and flags. And a proper floor. And more cracks to the wall. And perhaps a few more details to the cabinet.

[Shook]

OK SO

i'm not done with that super huge thing yet. Meanwhile, here's some other things.

- Fishosaurus. Now pixel'd rather than doodle'd.

- Some super quick glacial cave thing. It felt fitting for the music i was listening to at the time being, despite the obvious lack of details. :U

- Gobleman.

- Urist McLincoln. He is very wise indeed.

- Had a go at making a monster that is actually monstrous. Three heads, three pairs of legs, one really unpleasant behavioural pattern: CRUSH KILL PURSUE DESTROY MAIM REPEAT. Here's an extended description if you want to read it.

[Fniff]

Whooo I did a shading.

Spoiler: Random Fluff (click to show/hide)

There is a strange man at the bottom of the seas that some call the Diver.

Now, they say that he was man with only one love, and he truly loved the seas. He was one of the few who jumped at the chance to go into the first diving suits, a dangerous and stupid decision that only got stupider and more dangerous as he explored the bottom of the sea. Thirsting to go deeper, he went on dark and unexplored paths to find what lay on those shadowy depths. He came across a man in a cloak and a bird mask calling himself the Doctor who promised to send him deep. He was given a diving suit, and he strapped in and went under. He found he did not require a breathing line, nor did he have a limit on going deeper. As he explored, he found he preferred the dark, cold depths to the glaring, nasty surface. Feeling more happy under the depths, he stayed there for as long as he would live, which would not be long considering there was a leak.

That is when things started to go wrong for him. First he found that he would not die. For a year he stayed, wondering why he would not die. When he went back onto the surface the long way (walking) he found that he had fused to his suit. He could not get out, since it caused him physical pain to even try to take off a boot. He found that his suit was now his body. So he returned to the depths, spending decades down there, in the cold and the dark. He occasionally kills divers and takes down submarines just for something to do. He severed their lifeline, ripped their radios from their helmets and waited for their life supply to run out to see their dance of death. They struggled, they fought, they screamed, but nothing could stop him. The Doctor had given him inhuman strength to match with his transformation into a suited abomination.

The last thing they saw was a diver with a glowing helmet holding them down, refusing to let them go with inhuman strength...

[Shook]

And no comments about my stuff? :c

Anyways, good to see you haven't abandoned this fine craft! Also, you're improving, nice. Now, you should work a bit on volume and details. Actually, mostly volume. Placing light and shadows the right places makes a huge difference for an image. EXAMPLE:



Ohey look, it is YOUR MOTHER a giant ugly worm! Let us add some light to it.



wait wait



shit



UHM



Aha, getting closer!



YES. Now let us continue down this lane.



There we go. Now let's look at them side by side.



Don't know about you, but i like the right one better, even though i actually cocked up the highlights a bit, especially on the mandibles. Basically, the trick is to not shade things as a single object (unless it's a super simple shape), but several connected objects casting shadows on themselves and others. This worm, for instance, has a round head that turns a bit toward the viewer, which casts a bit of a shadow at the body near the turning point.

POST SCRIPTUM: Also, the sun is a HUGE light source, it doesn't just light up a spot on people like a flashlight does. Nay, a good analogy would be an essentially infinitely wide plane of light, moving perpendicularly to its surface. This plane then lights up everything it hits, and is subsequently blocked in the places where it hits something. Now, the sun is obviously spherical, but since it's diameter is more than a hundred times larger than Earth, we don't get to see the effects of it, so we as Earthlings can reasonably approximate the incoming light to being parallel rays.

[Yoink]

The Gobleman is amusing, but I have to say my favourites would be the unnamed monster and YOUR MOTHER the giant ugly worm. Good job on those!

[Shook]

Thanks! I dare say i also like those two in particular as well, they turned out really nicely. c: (EXCEPT the worms mandibles, but such things are way harder to draw than they should be because of their curving... curves)
Also hey look!



a sord (it is based on a description of an artifact iron short sword given to me)

oh wait, here comes another!!



HOLD IT RIGHT THERE GREAT BIG DEMON LORD WHO JUST TORE THE GUY NEXT TO ME IN HALF

you are trespassing

wait

uhm

[Yoink]

Holy crumbs, that is utterly amazing! No seriously, that has to be one of the most awesome-tacular things ever.
I mean, imagine if that was... A game... Oh my god. I'll be behind this bunch of green pixels resembling a shrub over here.

* Yoink scuttles away sheepishly, overwhelmed.

[Reudh]

Comrade Shook, do you take requests?

[freeformschooler]

AAH oh man that's awesome. Seriously, I wish I could pixel art like that.

[Powder Miner]

That worm should be actually named YOUR MOTHER.

[Shook]

Too late, already named it Red Tri-Horror.

@freeform: Thanks! From what i've seen, you're pretty good at that drawing business (and oh dear god your endless variations of loface are excellent), so i bet it wouldn't take much to get super good at pixel art either!

@Reudh: I guess so, just don't expect me to make them if i don't want to. :U

@Yoink: Thanks, but i beg to differ!

http://pixel-artists.deviantart.com/gallery/7916712

That gallery contains a gagillion things that are way better. Also, if it was a game, it would either be the beginning or a losing condition. :U (HUMANITY VS WORLD-ENDING DEMON INVASION, A TALE OF HORROR AND HEARTWARMTH, GO (and then humans was a zombie))

Also, fun fact: It originally started out at half the final resolution, but then i was like "nah that doesn't do the scene justice" and then i upscaled it. It took fucking HOURS.