Amateurhour's Thread of Pixel Art and other Mediums

[amateurhour]

So new guy here (well, I've posted a few times now, so new-ish) and I wanted to make an art thread. I've never really tried pixel art before and my first attempt was in a few of the competition threads a month or so ago. I've been having fun with it though so I started working on some art that I wanted to share here and hopefully get some good constructive criticism from some of you experts out there.

A little backstory...

I've been a webcomic artist/writer for a few years and one of my longer running comics has kind of stopped giving me inspiration, but rather than bury it, I decided to turn it into a video game as my wife and I just started up our official studio business and we're expanding content. I had played around with RPG maker but it's clunky and creates HUGE files due to the included source packs so after a little searching I found the amazing utility that is AGS. Having grown up with adventure games (albeit NES ports of most of them) I love the genre and it seemed like the right direction.

So currently I'm turning this....





Into this...

[imgzoom]http://www.pinkpineappleink.com/images/template_Chuck.png[/imgzoom]


[imgzoom]http://www.pinkpineappleink.com/images/template_Evan.png[/imgzoom]

I'd love some feedback on the characters. I started with a template and filled in the pixels in paint for a base layer, then imported that into photoshop for some touch up work. The shading is pretty much carbon copy so I need to differentiate it between the characters, but it's a start.

Also, for fun, here's my new comic Fortune Pancakes





I'll post some other artwork (paintings, sketches, etc) here as well because I'm a sucker for forum art threads.

Thanks for looking at my stuff!

[Armageddon]

I don't think the sprites capture the comic likeness. You should go for a less generic pose and try for something asymmetric with less shading. Take a look at Sam and Max: Hit The Road.

[amateurhour]

Thanks for the feedback, and I'll totally take that into consideration. Honestly I am a traditional artist so using a mouse to place one pixel at a time is kind of killing me inside : )

I think I might try a few attempts at a more painterly style a-la Ben Jordan and see how that looks instead.

Thanks!

[Armageddon]

I was trying to find a big headed character I remember ProgZMax did, but I can't. So here's a rough(very, very rough) proportion sketch I did.

In your comic you can only tell characters by their face and shirt colour, I think that would look great and stylized on a sprite with exaggerated head proportions to really pack in the personality. Just a thought.

[Martyn]

you might do something like this:



I did the pixelman shorter and made ​​a new head.