Pixel-pushing badge picture

[TheYak]

After that MS-Paint thread brought Paint.NET to my attention, I decided to give it a try.Ã,  I did find that it has a few things above MS-Paint but not enough to award a kick-ass designation.Ã,  MS-Paint actually does some things quite a bit better.Ã, 

Anyway, for a work-in-progress for work, I did a picture of one of the Lucasfilm security badges, trying for a 16 - 32 color type design.Ã,  The top made me miss Photoshop terribly and I (admittedly) got a little lazy on it. I had a bitch of a time trying to figure out what I wanted my palette to be and how to represent gold (I know I've done gold better at some point).


Ã,  General pointers and tips would be nice but in particular on how to make the gold more realistic and the whole thing a tad more metallic.

[deadsuperhero]

Okay, use dodge where the bright parts are, and use burn where the dark parts are.
Also, use the smudge tool to get the following:

[Venus]

I don't know, but I liked the original version better. The dodging, burning and smudging didn't make it look more realistic, but just blurry imo. I have no idea how to do it better though. I'd take a look at some real badges. I'm sure you'll find plenty on google. Take a look at them and see how the gold looks there.

Just my two cents.

[Evil]

Wow, this looks great! I hate to bring forth a ton of critics because you did such amazing work in paint alone, but I'll name a few things.

As for the gold, the color is pretty close to actual gold plating. But normally, just before the white highlight, the gold turns a bit yellow.

The eagle and banners have a lot of good values, but the outet leaves are light. A few darker values here and there will bring out that detail.

The middle circle, I think, is really taking away from the image. And I think when it's more finished, it will better the picture.

Its still fantastic work and I can't wait for more updates.

[Mr Jake]

yeah, I like it, but for some reason the middle circle doesn't look right, its not bad quality of anything it just doesn't quite go together :/

[TheYak]

Alright, now you've done it.  With multiple comments on the centerpiece I felt inclined to photograph my reference.  Now I've got to confront my demons and notice where my proportions and overall shape are wrong. 

Come to think of it, I should just take the metal color values from this, eh?
I am seeing (now that it's a photo and not just in front of me) what you meant by the more yellow values.  There's also more consistency in the highlight to dark thing that I used.  I had more of a random metallic-shading thing going.

Thanks for the tips, Webspider but I've been doing this only in Paint.NET. It'd be a shame to break down and use Photoshop (which I haven't got at work anyway) now.