01-18-2015, 07:42 AM
That's a definite improvement! Her hair bothers me though; when you move like that, your hair wont be perfectly static, even if its gelled. It'll move to some extent, however small. That being said, her bangs and ponytail don't feel right staying almost exactly how they were just moments before the thrust.
If anything, her ponytail both before and after the thrust should display some concept of gravity... it won't stay perfectly horizontal by any means. As a dude with a fairly long ponytail I can verify that, in fact, hair does not defy gravity and tends to sharply curve down wards!
I also made an edit of her standing frame to help illustrate some points. You can use this as a reference ~
If I did something wrong with this, somebody please correct me by all means \o/
![[Image: PgetfWn.png]](http://i.imgur.com/PgetfWn.png)
The first thing I did was change the palette! The brightest purple and the light grey were extremely close to being the same, so I just replaced the grey with the purple. Once I did that, I cut out the vibrant blue colour, which stuck out just a little too much with the purple. There were two dark blues, one being a little more saturated than the other, so I got rid of the saturated one. Next I brightened the dark purple slightly and changed the red to a sort of hot pink to fit just a little better with the piece. My changes effectively cut the colour count from 14 to 11 and (imo) make the piece look just a bit better.
After I got the palette done, I went ahead and changed her hair so the ponytail hung down. I also pushed her ears up a little bit and gave her bangs a liiiittle bit of volume so it no longer looked like a wisp stuck to her head! After that, I pushed up her face and reshaded it, stretching out her mouth by a pixel to help convey her determined and confident expression. Finally, I thinned out her neck, adjusted her jaw, and reshaded it. In doing these things, I fixed her hair's problem with gravity as well as its shape, helped convey her emotion more, and fixed up some of her anatomy. You could probably make her neck even thinner, if you would want to!
Next I pushed the shading on her chest back just a little bit, adjusted the shading on her arm, shaded her shield, and adjusted the positioning of her legs and the shape of her boots. Adjusting the boots and legs helped balance her stance a bit, as in the original, she seemed to be leaning too far forward for what would be supported by her legs. I changed the shape of her boots a bit because, frankly, the sharpness at the top of them bothered me, particularly on her left leg~
Finally, I made her tail a bit more 'floofy,' gave the rims of her shoulder and hip guards some highlights, and mostly redid the AA. The small amount of dithering on the tail is there to help convey the fact hair/fur doesn't cleanly reflect light without adding a middle colour and adjusting the palette again. Her tail, like her hair, is not a wisp (but is in fact hair with volume and uneven lengths!! Remember, hair often isn't a perfect shape. It's quite literally over 100000 completely different strands that fall a certain way and react to gravity and movement in general), and shouldn't be conveyed as such.
I hope this helps! You're doing great, keep it up~
If anything, her ponytail both before and after the thrust should display some concept of gravity... it won't stay perfectly horizontal by any means. As a dude with a fairly long ponytail I can verify that, in fact, hair does not defy gravity and tends to sharply curve down wards!
I also made an edit of her standing frame to help illustrate some points. You can use this as a reference ~
If I did something wrong with this, somebody please correct me by all means \o/
The first thing I did was change the palette! The brightest purple and the light grey were extremely close to being the same, so I just replaced the grey with the purple. Once I did that, I cut out the vibrant blue colour, which stuck out just a little too much with the purple. There were two dark blues, one being a little more saturated than the other, so I got rid of the saturated one. Next I brightened the dark purple slightly and changed the red to a sort of hot pink to fit just a little better with the piece. My changes effectively cut the colour count from 14 to 11 and (imo) make the piece look just a bit better.
After I got the palette done, I went ahead and changed her hair so the ponytail hung down. I also pushed her ears up a little bit and gave her bangs a liiiittle bit of volume so it no longer looked like a wisp stuck to her head! After that, I pushed up her face and reshaded it, stretching out her mouth by a pixel to help convey her determined and confident expression. Finally, I thinned out her neck, adjusted her jaw, and reshaded it. In doing these things, I fixed her hair's problem with gravity as well as its shape, helped convey her emotion more, and fixed up some of her anatomy. You could probably make her neck even thinner, if you would want to!
Next I pushed the shading on her chest back just a little bit, adjusted the shading on her arm, shaded her shield, and adjusted the positioning of her legs and the shape of her boots. Adjusting the boots and legs helped balance her stance a bit, as in the original, she seemed to be leaning too far forward for what would be supported by her legs. I changed the shape of her boots a bit because, frankly, the sharpness at the top of them bothered me, particularly on her left leg~
Finally, I made her tail a bit more 'floofy,' gave the rims of her shoulder and hip guards some highlights, and mostly redid the AA. The small amount of dithering on the tail is there to help convey the fact hair/fur doesn't cleanly reflect light without adding a middle colour and adjusting the palette again. Her tail, like her hair, is not a wisp (but is in fact hair with volume and uneven lengths!! Remember, hair often isn't a perfect shape. It's quite literally over 100000 completely different strands that fall a certain way and react to gravity and movement in general), and shouldn't be conveyed as such.
I hope this helps! You're doing great, keep it up~