A: Altair

Bensonance

Here is my attempt at a pixel Altair. I don't do art - at all- so be kind :)

Reference image:

64x 64:


Enlarged, yet blurry:


I noticed how difficult detailing is to do. You artists are machines :/.

TasticLuc

Wow this is great! :) good work.

EvanGreenwood

Nice work. I like the limited tones. Has a very retro feel about it.

You can turn off Photoshop's filtering in General Preferences to resize things with "Nearest Neighbour" filtering and avoid making your large images blurry. (Don't know if you are using photoshop, but most image editing software has an option like that somewhere).

I don't know if you want to, but it might be cool to convey the shadow over his face. In the original version you can only see his chin and nose and shadow blacks out his eyes. Makes him very assassiny. Don't know if you were doing this with the grey?

Nice work!

Nandrew

Oh hell, that's awesome! And going max size, too! :O Very daring for not-an-artist, kudos on a good first draft.

dislekcia

Hey hey, one thing that stands out for me is the comparative shortness of his legs, I think it's the arms and trunk that do it. You can get away with unnatural proportions pretty easily in pixel art, just make sure that they're relatively constant throughout your image :)

I realise that the chest/belt armor is much more interesting to draw than legs ;)

Tuism

Nice work :D

A lot of this could be taken as stylistic choice, so please disregard what I'm gonna say if it was stylistic choice :)

- I find that the long arms and short legs might have come from starting an illustration from the top, working your way down, then realise you've reached the end of your canvas size, if that's the case, rather just do a rough overall outline, make sure you like the proportions, then start detailing.

- good job accentuating the eagle peak in the cap, even if it's not true to the original (more rounded top). The nose peeking out from the shadows is also a nice touch. Maybe deepen the shadows to pump the eagle peak even more - to that end, the grey outline of the face area of the hood doesn't really make sense to me, if the grey's the hood it should be lighter to emphasise the shadows next to it, if it's the shadow then rather blend it into the rest of the shadows.

- really dig the layering of the cloth on the lower part, you could give them some shadows to give them more depth, but that's a stylistic thing (and not so easy to figure out on complex objects)

good stuff :D

Bensonance

Thanks for the feedback all!

@BlackShipsFillTheSky Thanks for the little tip, I use Gimp, but I found the relevant setting. As for the shadow (@Tuism said something about it too), it was something I spent a while trying to get right, but I put it aside for the first iteration. I'll definitely experiment some more with the shadow because I agree it is important to his Assassiny-ness

@Nandrew, to be honest I thought the larger canvas size would be easier because it allows more detailing - this is obviously not the case?

@Dislekcia Yeah I notice that now... I think you're right - the arms are too long, which make the legs look strange, thanks for that!

@Tuism Really awesome comprehensive feedback, thanks man! :D. I did shift the body around a bit before I started on the arms. I think it is more just not noticing how awkwardly long the arms are .

That feedback on the hood shadows is awesome - I'll get on that :D. In additon, I'll also add some shadows to the cloth. Also, thanks for thinking it might be a stylistic choice, but it really wasn't - it was just inexperienced arting :D.

Nandrew

Well, the difficulty of going full-size is for you to evaluate, of course. :) I'd personally find it harder because there's far more pixels to pay attention to (you can get more detail, but the flipside is that you'll need to *work in* more detail ;) ).

Also, with regards to the arm/leg length ... bear in mind that the chest plate thingie (?) *looks* like a belt of sorts, but it's not at typical belt level (I know that in my head it would easily feel like a logical separator of upper/lower body while I draw). This may be throwing you off with regards to arm and leg length, as I often use a belt position myself to help judge the sizes of each. I think I'd go with lengthening the legs slightly, though I suppose the arms could also do with some shortness (halp i may be completely rong).