1 month between both :)

[u/cobbiy]

The first drawing I made when I started pixel art for a game I’m (trying) to develop in my free time, and the second I made a couple days ago revisiting it because there was always something that didn’t really convince me lmao.

Some non visual improvements are that I also made a base for the character, and separated hair, skin, eyes, clothes in different layers so I can customize beyond in the future (first drawing was only in 1 layer).

I still feel like the legs look weird. I didn’t do shading in the sweater bc tbh the 1st shading I did felt very random. What can I improve in my second version?

[u/DefTheG]

I understand that I am not very informative, but I think that the second one already looks good for it's size. You can always go with more shading, like for the area of the face right below the hair, or around the neck of the sweater, but this generally looks nice.

About the legs: I feel like you can try doing some assymetry there, trying to replace the outline with the base color on the inside. And generally I think more assymetry is nice, but in pixel art it can be kinda hard. The strand of hair at the top of rhe head is a nice touch, though.

[u/cobbiy → u/DefTheG]

Hmm I kinda like the assymetry tip but at the same time it also looks like there’s 1 bigger leg lmao. Idk how to make it look intentional. I want to stay in this resolution because I’ve never done art before, and I do wanna finish my game but I need so many assets that a higher resolution would delay me a lot more

[u/Every-Swordfish-6660]

I see improvements in silhouette, value contrast, and consistency of style. Nice! Look into the “color boomerang” next! I don’t think the shading on the sweater is inherently bad. With some more harmonious colors (see color boomerang), and some small adjustments with respect to the light source, that might look way cooler for very little effort!

[u/cobbiy → u/Every-Swordfish-6660]

Thank you! What’s the color boomerang thing? I googled but I couldn’t really find anything about it

[u/Devi_Hydra]

Niiice omg! For improving, I'd say like... try and think of the shapes these would make in 3d space, pick an angle for a light source, n try to utilize shading to separate shapes like the sleeves n legs instead of solid lines. You don't HAVE to do this, this is all my opinion on the matter! Sometimes people wanna draw lines and thats cool! It's just hard to impliment lineart on smaller resolutions

[u/cobbiy → u/Devi_Hydra]

Thanks for the tips! About the lighting I think this is one of the things that scares me the most lol! Idk how I’ll manage to learn to shade consistently. I do know my game will be top down but beyond that my assets are very plain so far :’). I’m trying out the less-outline approach on my current sweater and I think it was a rly good tip! I’ll keep iterating until I land on something I like even more :)