A: Necron Warrior
I am most definitely not an artist but I figured thats kinda the point of this and I do need to get round to doing SOME art sometime, figured pixel art would be a good place to start given the challenge :P
Why a Necron Warrior? Because the Necron race is OP and they're awesome and I couldnt think of anything else that I wanted to draw.
Reference images:
Results:
Attempt 1:
Attempt 2:
Attempt 3:
Zoomed in (all the cool kids are doing it):
Why a Necron Warrior? Because the Necron race is OP and they're awesome and I couldnt think of anything else that I wanted to draw.
Reference images:
Results:
Attempt 1:
Attempt 2:
Attempt 3:
Zoomed in (all the cool kids are doing it):
Comments
(1) Yeah, the shoulder pads could do with a little rounding, mebbe, based on what I see in your reference pics. Removing a single pixel from each of their top corners, maybe?
(2) Most of your image is fully outlined, which draws attention to the fact that the bottom of your feet aren't.
(3) I cannot count. I suppose the next step in elaborating would be varying the shades of grey you're using (depending on how many colours you want in the final pic). It seems to me like the collar area and joints are good candidates for lighter/darker shading (uhhh, not sure which would be more appropriate).
Heart.
In your reference pics there is green between the ribs but I think you'd be better off with light and dark greys denoting shadows and use the green to focus on the guass gun.
Speaking of which the guass gun is a significant weapon for the Necrons. The fact that you get special clear green plastic inserts for the models attests how important this weapon is for the race. I think you need to put a lot more green on the gun; and I'd even move the character off-centre and give the gun more focus.
All that said it's awesome to see that non-artists are taking this challenge to heart! And the results after just one day are awesome!
@Nandrew Right you are about the outlining! I shall fix that right away. I really just outlined it because at the moment it's mostly a single shade of grey (there are actually more there I think but they differ only very slightly
@aodendal I'll give focusing on the gun a shot, maybe I could use fainter greens for the actual necron and then the brighter greens on the gun? Also I'll definitely make him skinnier, I initially had him even fatter :O
I'll definitely do some experimenting with different greys next. What do you guys think about the transition between the hand and the gun though because I definitely struggled a bit to get that look not-retarded. Should I try and make it like the 3rd reference image where the gun is a much darker colour and then his hand ends where a handle would clearly be? (IE essentially just making the gun "wrap around" the hand more)
I totally agree with the comment about the gun. I think you should push it to be as long as you can to really exaggerate the silhouette -- in some of your reference the gun seems to be longer than his body itself! (In fact, when I look at the reference, the two things I see that define them for me are the giant green guns, and the skulls-as-faces. Possibly the ribcage. For something really small, I'd suggest exaggerating the shapes of those elements if you can!)
I also think that you'd do better with a lighter grey overall. :) Otherwise, if you end up wanting to add shadows and stuff they won't really be visible.
If you keep the chest that size, then I think you might want to take another look at the design in the reference. Their ribcage is separated by a tomb-stone design, so even if you don't have the space to fit that in there, I'd expect more of a /\ kind of shape, instead of the separation being straight down.
This has so much potential! :D
Try to get at least 2 tones for each colour to allow for volume exploration - it's amazing how much difference two tones, lighter on top/darker bottom (generally but not always true), can make!
Looking good! :)
Changes: I made the gun a LOT more prominent redid his torso entirely (not sure if it's skeletal enough yet? =/), made it look like he's facing to the side (sort of, just the legs seem to do it), made the whole thing lighter.
I also put in some darker spots where joints would be (I based it almost entirely off of the 3rd reference picture), not sure if the knee joint really does it though...
The I'm also not sure about the eyes...I kinda want them to glow a bit more but it seems like if I make it any lighter, it blends too much with the grey...
Also you could try a single white pixel surrounded by four green pixels, or a single lighter green surrounded by darker green. Glows are fun but tricky to master.
Regarding the eyes ... correct me if I'm wrong (artist types, srsly, *correct me if I'm wrong, do not let this acolyte fall prey to my evil*) but if you want them brighter and are struggling with the problem of them blending with the surrounding grey, crank them up to full lightness and then make the immediately surrounding pixels a *slightly* darker shade of grey than the rest of the face. That should offer you the contrast you need without it looking weird.
Actually, I just went ahead and tried it now for comparison:
Though mebbe this just makes him look like he's wearing goggles. Ahhh, nutsacks.
Well what do I know? :P haha. Good luck and good progress so far
For the legs, maybe try foreshortening the leg like the reference picture. Making the right leg straighter from front view should make the legs look less cartoony.
Added a little shading on the legs/around the head and I made his face darker to bring out the eyes a bit, not sure if I should try make them more glow-ey...I'm going for no?
Updated the original post with the new images.
EDIT: Removed that random pixel between the gun and the blade on the left of where they're attached.