Feature 03 - Mermaid

[Mirre]

Been working on this for some days now. I just couldn't stop when I started it. I've even been seeing pixels and thinking about dithering when watching TV in the breaks I've had when cooking and eating stuff and so on

I can say that I have already learnt lots by doing this piece, especially the tree and the water was killing me. Please give me some C&C. I always appreciate that. Hope you guys will like it! Oh, and do think it'd look good with a frame of some sort around it? Perhaps with shells, kelp and fishbones or something.

24 colours:





LATEST!!!:
With and without frame:

[Eric Stayburn]

its spelt colors geez.

[Mirre]

Seriously. If you don't have anything more serious to write here than about my spelling gtfoff my topic. And you CAN spell it colours. That's UK English. Know your stuff.

[Alex]

its spelt colors geez.

post something useful next time, child. spelling colours with a u is also acceptable. its a how we spell it in canada. so dont think you are so smart next time, idiot.

Mirre, this is so cute...it really is. I love all of the colours, but...the texture used on the tree and everything doesnt exactly match that of the mermaids scales and the rock shes on...just my opinion though, overall its a really nice piece.

[Eric Stayburn]

I'm not an idiot you smelly hippo. I'm gonna go play yu-gi-oh, holla.

[Dhaos]

In europe... I thought it was spelled colour? Anyways cute piece Mirre, the colors are very nice. Those fruit are making me very hungry... *wonders what they taste like.* I love the way you shaded the tree leaves and trunk. Nice and cartoony, again excellent color selection.

Crits:
-you might consider either completely dithering the mermaid or just keeping it block-colored (the body for example as opposed to the hair)
-the fins seem odd (almost unfinished-like), the scales of the mermaid are detailed, while the rest of her isn't
-the reeds should be a bit more washed out (blending with the backround more) given the time of day, tint them more blue perhaps
-consider adding some light-blue or white highlights to the water to form a shiny reflection or to emulate small crests int he water

Crits aside, that piece is so cute. I like it.

[Mirre]

Thanks for the great C&C guys!

clr: The styles clash a little, but I did not know how to unify them better. I did want the rock to look like a rock, and the moss was kind of hard to make it look like moss if I didn't dither it. Aaand, I think I got a bit carried away with the scales on the mermaids tail. I just love sparkles 

Dhaos: The fruit are golden apples (every fairytale have them ) Did you mean that I should remove the dithering in the hair? I'm not quite sure myself that it looks good, honestly, but without it the colours doesn't blend so well.
Oh yeah, the fins probably looks unfinished because I haven't highlighted the upper parts of it for some reason (I must be tired, haha).
I'll see what I can do about the highlight in the water and the browns (assuming you meant them with "reeds"), but they belong to the same ramp as the gold, so I'll see how it comes out.

[Cow]

I like this, it's quite cute [there must be an echo in here]. Especially the bird. Now for some crits.

-Her head seems to be moving independently from her hair. Like, she's tilting her head but her hair is facing the other direction.
-The AAing on the... reeds[?] doesn't seem to work too well.

I've always wondered if golden apples taste more like an apple or more like gold? Excuse me while I ponder this.

[Keops]

I think this is a very nice piece, very solid overall, the colorful palette works really well and kinda takes me back to the colorful 16-bit era ah those days...

Anyway, aside from some things Dhaos and mccow28 mentioned the only thing that I think needs my crit is the darkest shade you used, the selout in some places, like the stone for instance, look kind of broken. You might try toning this down a little bit to smooth things out a bit more, although it's not a big deal, this piece has a lot of contrast and texture thanks to the dithering so it's not that big of a deal.

I love it!

UPDATE: Upon further inspection and looking more and more to it at 1x I think it's nothing of a deal at all, it looks good enough, I was checking the piece with a lot of zoom so you can forget my crit. Good job! I need to inspect it more carefully to see if I find anything else on it.

[D39]

It looks crisp I love it.

I think you tied the whole thing together really well with the colors you used.  The only thing that feels a bit awkward is the bottom of the tail, it breaks the mood a little for me.

EDIT: As for a frame, I don't think it needs one. The piece is really great on its own, with alot of style. I think a frame might just take away some of the focus.

[Godslayer]

Try replacing the black where rock meets water with a light color and see how that looks.

[rabidbaboy]

I also think that the fins look out of place. I'm not really sure how to fix this, but I'm sure there are plenty others who can help in that. It just screams "I GOT LAZY HERE" for me.:S

That said, very cheery and colorful piece. I really like the textures on the trunk and the stone.

[8bitty]

i love it mirre, but i don't really think the face looks very... feminine?

edit:


added nose
changed mouth
reduced some of the aa
reflected small amount of light onto forehead
some other small things on facial area

apart from that i think it's great 

[ptoing]

Ok I took the time to make a major edit, just because I like this so much and I feel you could improve in a few areas.
Time to break out of your comfort zone!

I think the whole thing iss too outliney and the selout all over the place breaks things into little solitary cardboard cutouts, I feel as if i can take the whole treestrunk out of the picture leaving a hole showing a woodpanel on the underside like like in those kids wood puzzles, same goes for other pieces, like the top of the tree and esp the little stone.

I removed all the black and selout from the outlines, there is some black left but not much.
I aa'ed the objects to the background so they would fit in nicely .
Merged two colours into one (body and apples)
Added a new darker colour for the stone which I also used in the tree. Colourcount is still 24.
added some highlights to various things, leaves, treetrunk and so on.
Gave the poor lass a proper mouth and nose and changed the shape of the face a tiny bit.
made the wrist of the supporting hand a bit slimmer
Added some little highlights, waverings on the water (needs more on other objects as well)
Fixed aa on 2 of the reeds and gave one reed a proper shape, reeds are longish and have a bit of the stem at the top most of the time.
Also added some highlight/texture to the bigger reed to give it a feel of fuzzyness.
Pronounced shadows here and there and changed palette a little to unify it a bit more, could be taken further.

Yours -- Mine


I suspect that you always do very clean lineart first and then you add in colour, other than that I can not explain to myself how you end up with this massive amount of Selout. I would suggest to you for your next piece like this not to do any lineart, but instead try to work in shapes.
Block out fields of colour and work from that. In nature there are no outlines and in case you want to do something really cartoony work the outlines into the image instead of breaking them up with selout.

You also seem to only use 1 pixel aa, as in abcd, but it can also be aabbcc or something else.
Antialiasing is always an approximation to fake higher resolution/greater smoothness.


I think if you would take these pointers into account and would perhaps not think so much of "sprites" when you pixel you could advance quite a bit further.

Keep it up 

[Faceless]

I'd go for something more like this.
I think Ptoing's loses the tranquility of the scene, and those lips are just ugly.

[Helm]

I thought the lips in Ptoing's edit made it 3x better in terms of characterization. Small edit on rocks. Reflections, tints, took a color out.

[Tisha]

I thought the lips in Ptoing's edit made it 3x better in terms of characterization. Small edit on rocks. Reflections, tints, took a color out.

/agree

one of the most remarkable feminine features in a woman, are the lips. I think Ptoing really captured that sensuality and beauty that a woman must have.alos I share the opinion of not using black but a very dark color.
I also have to say that I love that piece allot. she is very curvilinear, very feminine body, and the face edit was the final touch. Mirre, amazing job! I hope that if I eat my veggies and pixel hard, I'll be as well skilled as you are <3

[Player1]

IMHO, original smile fit look and feel of picture ideally.

[Toby]

I'm going to join the choir and say that I absolutely love this

ptoing brought some good point up, like the black outline between the rock and the water, ripples in the water, and the mermaids lips. Proper lips certainly give personality to the character.

But, I did like the darker vibrant colors of the original instead of the softer ones in the edit, with the exception of the bluer shade on the lowest level of leaves. I also feel that some improved selout would have been the way to go on instead of heavy AA. Visible outlines seems to be a trademark in your pieces, and at least I think it fits their cartoonesque feel better. In the original version the selout seemed to be a bit choppy, but I'm sure you can improve  

[ptoing]

Selout^TM is always choppy.

[Toby]

Selout^TM is always choppy.

How do you mean?

[pkmays]

Selout/inverse anti-aliasing are only required if the sprite and background are separate objects. For a piece like this, I think AA is the way to go.

I am missing the black outlines too. It's all about aesthetics, but I think the piece gained something with the additional highlights and detailing, but lost something when the crisp outlines where blued up.

[Feron]

I am missing the black outlines too. It's all about aesthetics, but I think the piece gained something with the additional highlights and detailing, but lost something when the crisp outlines where blued up.

I totaly disagree with you there.  We could argue about this for hours and in the end it boils down to personal preference.

Absolutley awesome, the only thing that puts me off is the tail (as with many others). 

[Helm]

Selout/inverse anti-aliasing are only required if the sprite and background are separate objects. For a piece like this, I think AA is the way to go.

Don't forget, kids, pkmays is the devil! He invented the term - though not the practise - of what we refer to as selout. Hopefully the holy crusade of counter-propaganda that we've had in full effect for the last few years will undo the damage to the pixelly universal subconscious that making your sprites look like cardboard cutouts is a good idea

I can just see Tsugumo going in de-lurk mode to team up with pkmays to battle us over how 'hey, capcom does it!'

[Indigo]

helm, untill recently I always thought that simply coloured-changing (according to light) outlines was also considered sel-out.  In a way, it is, because your "selectively outlining" certain areas of your sprite with different colours (solid line, not choppy).  If that be the case, then sel-out could be both clean *and* choppy.  But since i learn that it's not, I say that coloured outlines deserves a pixel-term.  It deserves it much more than the choppy sel-out does.

[Helm]

I used to say selselout (selective-selective-outlining) for what you describe, but in the end it's a common rendering practise that isn't specific to pixel art at all as far as I can tell.

[Feron]

helm, untill recently I always thought that simply coloured-changing (according to light) outlines was also considered sel-out.  In a way, it is, because your "selectively outlining" certain areas of your sprite with different colours (solid line, not choppy).  If that be the case, then sel-out could be both clean *and* choppy.  But since i learn that it's not, I say that coloured outlines deserves a pixel-term.  It deserves it much more than the choppy sel-out does.

anti-outlining!

[ptoing]

Nah, i am with Helm on this one, there needs not be a seperate term for this as it's not pixel specific. It's simply light- and/or weight dependantly shaded outlines.

enough with the derailing tho.

[pkmays]

[derail]

I can just see Tsugumo going in de-lurk mode to team up with pkmays to battle us over how 'hey, capcom does it!'

Heh, I wish this would happen, if only for the purpose of hearing from Tsu again. I don't think either of us felt that selout was the end-all-be all of sprite style. But hey, if an overly dramatic religious debate could bring him out of the wood-works, I'd be game. ; )

My feelings on selout have changed from back when it was the "hot new thing." I currently feel that solid colored outlines of various brightness with minimal internal AA tends to make for more attractive outlines. I'm probably thinking the same thing Indigo is. But really, skill and perception are the biggest factor in determining how good an outline looks regardless of the style. I didn't have very good perception of the technique I was trying to implement on the old blue board, and a lot of my sprites came out harsh and unattractive because I went overboard with selout.

...I say that coloured outlines deserves a pixel-term.  It deserves it much more than the choppy sel-out does.

Colored Outlining Which Emphasizes Luminous Functionality - Cowelf

Colored Outlining With Predetermined Optical Oppositional Pigmentation - Cowpoop

In case you didn't know, I'm pretty damn awesome at coming up with a catchy phrase for pixel techniques.

[/derail]

[Soup]

Wow. I am amazed.
But it has no nose. The face also needs some shading.

[Helm]

Heh, I wish this would happen, if only for the purpose of hearing from Tsu again. I don't think either of us felt that selout was the end-all-be all of sprite style. But hey, if an overly dramatic religious debate could bring him out of the wood-works, I'd be game. ; )

Heh, I hear you. I miss Tsugumo lots.

My feelings on selout have changed from back when it was the "hot new thing." I currently feel that solid colored outlines of various brightness with minimal internal AA tends to make for more attractive outlines.

Agree totally.

I didn't have very good perception of the technique I was trying to implement on the old blue board, and a lot of my sprites came out harsh and unattractive because I went overboard with selout.

Still remember that Blade of the Immortal grayscale sprite that was so nice but was destroyed by harsh selout everywhere. Still have?

[snake]

Absolutely love this. There were a few things you could do differently. Experimented a bit to show some suggestions:


(edit on Helm's edit)

The way the shoulders are connected now are a bit broad and is nearly parallel to the neckbone. Usually the shoulders are slightly above when leaning/resting on that arm. Some minor edits on her right (our left) arm since it looked a little squareish. There is also a very little indication of a ribcage so I pulled that further out so it would match up with her other shoulder. I also reduced her gut. Not because she looked beefy, but because her arm is allready hiding that she's sitting tilted forward/sideways. The extra gut made her look more like a flat column sitting straight down and taking away her pose (if that makes any sense...). Also did an edit to a few of the apples to suggest an alternative way of making the apples more golden.

On a sidenote, the fins are taking away a lot of attention. Maybe you could blend them in a way, I don't know. They do balance out the picture, but with the shading they have now, they grab the attention as yellow blobs rather than fins complimenting the rest.

Only suggestions of course. Just wanted to put my two cents into the ring.

[Kren]

hmm the only thing that doesn't suit is the tail of the mermaid, it seems to me that it is not the same style as the rest of the picture.

[Toby]

helm, untill recently I always thought that simply coloured-changing (according to light) outlines was also considered sel-out.  In a way, it is, because your "selectively outlining" certain areas of your sprite with different colours (solid line, not choppy).  If that be the case, then sel-out could be both clean *and* choppy.  But since i learn that it's not, I say that coloured outlines deserves a pixel-term.  It deserves it much more than the choppy sel-out does.

This is what I always thought selout stood for, a colored outline that changes according to where light is coming from. So, I'm sorry for misusing the term, but I still feel that a colored outline fits this piece better than AA.

[eobet]

I hope I don't offend anyone for saying this, but in all the edits, the mermaid has gone from cutesy to a bimbo.

The quality of the picture has improved, but the original character has been transformed into something completely different.

I also agree with the previous post, the mermaid's tail is too attention grabbing in the composition as it is now.

[Helm]

Though I don't care for the tummy tuck snake performed, it alarms me how you think give her actual lips contributes to her being a bimbo. I'd be scared to ask where that came from.

[Faceless]

Though I don't care for the tummy tuck snake performed, it alarms me how you think give her actual lips contributes to her being a bimbo. I'd be scared to ask where that came from.

There are plenty of mouth shapes, so claiming that he's attributing bimboness to "actual lips" is a bit unfair.
The shape of the eyes and the nose in the edit also contribute.

[Dusty]

Well, mermaids are supposed to be seductive by nature... least from the tales and such.
Anyways, I too much prefer the conditional-outlining(I'm going to call it that, because it changes due to the condition. For reference, I'm refering to the coloured outlining, not the black). I think black outlines are just way too harsh, and if you do want to keep them, drop darkness of it down a notch to a more near-midtone grey. In the original picture, the thing that stood out most is that it seemed you were going for a cartoony style, which the black outlines would fit. But then the outline of the hair and the arm was compeltely different.

I agree with what was said about the finsl. I think they're just way too large for such a lack of detail, and just stand out compared to the rest of the picture. I supposed you could either size them down a bit, or add some sort of texturing to it.
I'm also not sure about the dithering. You have dithered a lot of the picture, then didn't dither the rest. It really gives a clash of style to it, as some things like the tree are smooth and cartoony, then you have a more detailed rock, moss, and scales of the mermaid. That also goes with what I was saying about her tail.

I think the new face fits the purpose of the mermaid a lot more, and I don't think it makes her look like a bimbo. Though I think her left eye in the edit could use a move to the left a pixel.

[Terley]

I personally think the fin-tail bit is too light, looks great in the reflection but It seems too distracting to me..



Damn, already bin said.. ok, erm.. Last minute thought, maybe on the edits her lips are too large? I personally think this looks more feminine.. 

[ndchristie]

as for the lips 'isuue', i'd either lighten them or darken the face.  i doubt it's the shape that's bothering people, but the fact that so much attention is drawn to them.  without some real makeup, few girls have lips that dark against skin that light.

heres an edit -



also, i didnt notice this until i started working, but the light sources are separated....split down the center really.  compositionally it works, but visually (and scientifically, if you can talk about science with regard to light on mermaids) not so well

[Sohashu]

I had a few seconds.  so I made a quick edit. 



Basically, I was just making a quick point about the tail fins.  The actual tail is pretty good, but the style there doesn't fit in with the fins.  So I made a quick dither thing. 

Also, I don't agree with the hard highlight on the hairs top.  Too harsh for me. 

[Fool]

Sorry if my post is pointless, just want to say I watch that tread as a movie and I really like the first picture as much as most of the edits, which convince me the piece very well done from the beginning is very hard to ruin.

[cave]

I have to say this is turning out to be my favorite pixelation spontaneous collaboration thread! Here's my two cents, building upon Adarias' great edit. I agree the tail needs a different shading, right now it's just clashing way too much with the rest.

[Helm]

I just wish we didn't scare Mirre off herself.

[cave]

I just wish we didn't scare Mirre off herself.

Point taken. Mirre where are you?

[Terley]

well with the amount of edits I suppose she feels she's not needed anymore, 

It's really nice this, love to see what you do with it Mirre.

[Helm]

well with the amount of edits I suppose she feels she's not needed anymore, 

GRAR! Edits mean nothing unless the original artist benefits from them!! Okay, there's the secondary boon of learning yourself and becoming better at finalizing art, but never should it be at the expense of the original poster.

[Terley]

yeah, your right. sry

[Mirre]

Gah! Soryy guys, I didn't mean to seem so ... unappreciative. I'm working on it, and I'm aboyt half done! Just had to finish some other art with deadlines and stuff there around Halloween, and then a friend from Sweden came over in the weekend so I'm not done with my edit based on all the wonderful C&C I've gotten. Plus I'm going to write replies to you all, so don't think I don't appreciate it - I do! It's just taking me some time.

I'm really baffled by the amount of response I've gotten on this piece. Must've done something right.

[st3ady]

really nice job mirre!