Any way to make the shading more "Realistic"?

[Houchin1012]

Through trial & trial again, I've managed to finish my first image in Microsoft Paint!



Something doesn't seem to be right about it though.  I'm betting it's both the perspective of some of the objects, but most importantly, the shading seems off. (Most particularly about the floor and urinals).

Would there be any way to make this seem a little more realistic?

Furthermore, what would you say is my skill in pixel drawing?  I should understand, so I know what to further study when I attempt another drawing.

[uoou]

You've got a very high viewpoint there, so high that it'd actually be above the ceiling, unless that light fitting has a very very long cord. Nothing wrong with that though.

The perspective is very flat - almost orthographic actually, as if this is looking through a powerful zoom lens. Again, nothing wrong with that in itself so long as that's what you were going for but a zoom lens (even imagined) in such a small space (a public toilet) is a bit jarring.

You can see that the green door of the cubicle doesn't line up with the grout lines in the floor tiles, so either the floor tiles are wonky (fine) or one is not quite in perspective with the other.

To sort out the perspective I'd draw the floor first because those floor tiles should help you draw everything else. If you didn't want the 'camera' so high up, redraw the floor flatter (i.e. as if your eye was closer to the floor). If that's where you wanted the 'camera' then I'd just tidy up the perspective on the cubicle, bringing the bottom of the  leg nearest the viewplane downwards a bit (and skewing the door a bit to match) as everything else is pretty much consistent.

The lighting's a bit off - the halo on the floor doesn't actually follow through from the centre of the light fitting (draw a line down from the cord of the light until it hits the floor - the centre of the halo should be there).

The lighting's kinda inconsistent (unless there's hidden light sources) - the lamp only illuminates a small patch on the floor, yet the urinals and far wall are better lit than things closer to the light. I think you need to dither the light falloff on the floor far more gradually (because it's that halo which makes everything else look inconsistent, rather than the other way around). A normal lamp wouldn't create that sharp a halo anyway.

I know nothing of pixel art so I can't get into specifics there.

Nice tone to the whole thing though - definitely puts me in mind of dingy, dirty, piss-smelling public toilets

[Houchin1012]

Awesome then.

Unless you already noticed, I put in these varying shades of dots in each layer of shading on the floor.  In the outside shading layer, I decided to try and pixel in some shadows created from the lamp behind each curve on each tile.  I was trying to make it seem very bright in the center because of this effect, but I doubt it worked out that way.

If I did dither the colors used in the center halo, do you think this effect shall become more noticeable?

[uoou]

Yeah, I think I see what you're talking about.

I think the inner halo needs expanding and softening a lot. I can see that you've dithered but the edge of the inner halo is still very very hard. I think that edge needs to be dithered so that it softly fades from that inner halo colour to the next colour over about the diagonal length of a floor tile, if you get me.

I like the crisp line between the outer halo and the pure shadow though, gives the impression of a penumbra nicely.