Custom mugshot tips

[George Reds]

So I've finished my first custom mugshot and I want some tips:

I need tips in drawing better hair, and maybe eyebrows, also clothes. The clothes are supposed to be like hana's and hinata's without their armor.

[Teapot]

It'd probably be best to follow the old walk-before-run adage. Your spriting isn't bad, but there are a lot of more technical fundamentals you're a kinda weak in.

Immediately, there's just not a lot of shading going on, and what is shaded is pretty much just flat expanses that don't really show any sense of shape or depth. While FE shading does follow a more cel-shaded sort or anime style, there's still a lot of anti-aliasing that goes into it to smooth out lines and give the perception of shape and depth. I can tell that you tried spriting much like you probably try to draw - that is, you make lines and then color them. It really doesn't work as well with spriting. Pixels work more like an optical illusion. You have a small canvas and a limited amount of colors - as such, each and every pixel counts toward the illusion.

To start off with, let's go with the hair:
There's some decent shape and flow going on, but the overall appearance is pretty blobby and simple. Additionally, the lines are banded, and the shading offers little depth aside from a slightly pillowed look. It's natural to want to band/pillow things, but note that the lightest shade doesn't always have to touch the middle shade; you're entirely allowed to put lightest with darkest. Another thing that a lot of people are afraid to do is to shade with the darkest color. Not everything has to be midtone shaded. If you want dynamic shading, get used to being generous with your darkest and lightest tones. Those pack more punch than midtone. Additionally, not everything needs to be outlined with the darkest shade.

Rough example:

Face:
He's cross-eyed. I'd honestly probably recommend just stealing eyes off existing mugs to begin with, as eyes are kind of a tricky area for most people. Like your hair, you're really not AAing enough with the dark tones you're given; instead, you tend to just draw features in and try to blend them into the rest of the face. I don't really have a lot of advice aside from reffing vanilla mugs as much as possible and making sure you actually make use of the darkest skin tone. Your current darkest skin tone is actually too dark for the rest of your skin, so it isn't as optimal for shading. It probably doesn't help that you tried to mix FE6/7 and FE8 colors.

Rough edits:

Body:
Right off the bat I can tell you that his far shoulder is up too high and is probably too small. I'm not sure about the pose you tried to go for, but possible foreshortening isn't reading well here. A good way to catch weirdness and wonk is by doing periodic horizontal flipping of the image. This tricks your brain into thinking of it as a completely different image, thus allowing you to find mistakes you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Also, Hinata and Hana are pretty much just wearing kimono/yukata under their armor. I don't really see any resemblance to the shirt/scarf combo in your sprite.

That being said, though, let's try and fix the body.
This is approximately your body as it stands:

There's massive asymmetry in the shoulders, and his neck is probably too long, too. The best way to go about this is to block in the shape of the body, first, then add rough shading where needed to show depth/where shading should go.
Rough blocking:

Here, I've evened out the shoulders and brought his head down and back a pixel. Also tweaked the neck and evened out the midline for the collar a bit, but that's trivial. Then you can toss the scarf/cape on over it and throw on some shading.

After that, it's just polish, honestly. Best thing to do is try reffing vanilla as much as possible. I would really recommend getting used to doing more intense splices first and learning how to custom the bits you need heavily doctored.

also, here's the thing i messed with, idefk

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Teapot

[George Reds]

Thanks so much for the tips, I'm quite grateful for the tips. I'll keep them in mind for my next (quite improbable) mug. The eyes were taken from  Oujay, and the color palette, I think, was taken from Karel (fe 6). I don't see that much difference between the colors of fe 6 and 7.

Also, their clothing or more precisely Hana's clothing is composed by the pink kimono and the blue one. That's what my red "scarf" is, the blue part.

Edited February 9, 2017 by George Reds

[Teapot]

FE6/7 have roughly the same palettes, as they share outline and darkest skin tones; it's the FE8 that's the issue.

The cloth under the armor is pmuch like a tabard. Her actual kimono ends around crotch-length, so the rest of it just hangs under the armor and covers her lady bits.

ps - i hate the ever loving shit out of the new forums

Edited February 10, 2017 by Teapot

[George Reds]

On 2/9/2017 at 8:26 PM, Teapot said:

 

Edited March 24, 2017 by George Reds