WIP (Phantasy Star 2 - fan art) *update 5/5/12

[SlowDaddie]

Started playing Phantasy Star 2 (originally released on the Sega Genesis 1989, and re-released on Xbox 360 Arcade 2012) and it brought back good memories from when I first played it when I was 9. Still one of my favorite games!

Rolf


Nei


I will update this thread as I get more work done. Thanks for looking.

[FourTonMantis]

memories! love them!

[TinyBird]

You game portrait links are both broken to me.
Anyway, their hair doesn't seem to have any cast shadow and their jaws have no underside. I'd remove the lineart for a while and look which edges look unnaturally sharp and lack form. Also I'd note that the woman's eyes don't really seem to "go" in her face in terms of form, like this:


Also her eyes look skewed, like they're in the wrong angle compared to her nose and face. Compare the eyes and face angle in these two photos:


It looks like you're taking the eye-to-nose position from one and head position from other.

[Frida Bergholtz]

Do you flip your canvas horizontally sometimes while working? I'm asking because in both of these portraits the jaw line and cheek seem to be skewed where one side is bulging out a lot more than the other side. If you flip your picture it is much easier to notice things like this.

Anyhow I think that the style is appealing with the mix of stylized features and smooth rendering.

[SlowDaddie]

Thanks for the crits. Flipping Horizontally is brilliant, the cheeks / jawline / face contour has always been an issue for me.

The woman's eyeballs do appear a little funny now that you mention it. Wasn't sure what it was. I suppose that it isn't angled correctly, and that the left one looks 'flat'.

[Kiera]

There is a lot to say about the technique and about light and shadow, these portraits are good but they lack a bit structure. Especially the main heroes features seem to float a bit in his face.
Alright, but I just wanted to mention the likeness and how you present the characters:

The blonde haired guy, in the game screenshot looks determined, strict and rebellious.
He hasn't got a big forehead, his mouth is small and the lips seem to be pressed together. His eyebrows are strikingly long, like he has some elf-genes in there and additionally they are blonde which gives him an exotic, foreign feeling. Combine that with a very thin nose. (The game is most likley produced for a japanese market, characters with bright red or blonde hair and bright eye-colors are usually "the American" or "the European". Often their features and foreigness is exaggerated.)
The eyebrows sit surprisingly low over the eye, almost like he has that angry rebell stare where the head is tilted and the eyebrows go over the upper eyelids:
http://static.tumblr.com/z9cnfuk/foz..._photos_05.jpg
(only his face isn't tilted down, compare the position of the ears to the eyebrows)
His hair is cut shorter on the sides and left a bit longer on the top, which gives him this bunch of hair which goes over the forehead.
Either that, or he is starting to bald slightly which is a sign of age.

Your portrait doesn't take these features, your character looks far friendlier, younger and softer than the game character. Everything has been equalized so that it gets difficult to learn a lot about the character just from the face.
He has still got the same face shape and the thick neck, but the specificness of the original is gone. In the game he could've been the rebellious, secondary hero (think Han Solo) or the enemy (the young ambitious general, instructed by the evil overlord). In your portrait his role is hard to tell.

The same goes for the other characters, the original portrait of the blue haired girl suggest jumpyness, action and a sexy, confident, shrill charme. An action-girl. Your interpretation looks more carying, careful, mature, motherly - more like a healer.

Careful with the lenght of the noses on the first two, if you take anime proportions and make the eyes smaller you get those long-nosed characters.

[SlowDaddie]

There is a lot to say about the technique and about light and shadow, these portraits are good but they lack a bit structure. Especially the main heroes features seem to float a bit in his face.
Alright, but I just wanted to mention the likeness and how you present the characters:

The blonde haired guy, in the game screenshot looks determined, strict and rebellious.
He hasn't got a big forehead, his mouth is small and the lips seem to be pressed together. His eyebrows are strikingly long, like he has some elf-genes in there and additionally they are blonde which gives him an exotic, foreign feeling. Combine that with a very thin nose. (The game is most likley produced for a japanese market, characters with bright red or blonde hair and bright eye-colors are usually "the American" or "the European". Often their features and foreigness is exaggerated.)
The eyebrows sit surprisingly low over the eye, almost like he has that angry rebell stare where the head is tilted and the eyebrows go over the upper eyelids:
http://static.tumblr.com/z9cnfuk/foz..._photos_05.jpg
(only his face isn't tilted down, compare the position of the ears to the eyebrows)
His hair is cut shorter on the sides and left a bit longer on the top, which gives him this bunch of hair which goes over the forehead.
Either that, or he is starting to bald slightly which is a sign of age.

Your portrait doesn't take these features, your character looks far friendlier, younger and softer than the game character. Everything has been equalized so that it gets difficult to learn a lot about the character just from the face.
He has still got the same face shape and the thick neck, but the specificness of the original is gone. In the game he could've been the rebellious, secondary hero (think Han Solo) or the enemy (the young ambitious general, instructed by the evil overlord). In your portrait his role is hard to tell.

The same goes for the other characters, the original portrait of the blue haired girl suggest jumpyness, action and a sexy, confident, shrill charme. An action-girl. Your interpretation looks more carying, careful, mature, motherly - more like a healer.

Careful with the lenght of the noses on the first two, if you take anime proportions and make the eyes smaller you get those long-nosed characters.

That's an AWESOME crit man. Thanks

[Chris Sanders]

I think these look a little desaturated and plastic-y which is fine if thats where your going. but if your going for more of a human feel i think you could add some colour and just overall character to the portraits. i looked at rutger hauer for this one as it looked kinda like him. oh yeah reference, it'll add some more personality to them and make them less generic and symmetrical and perfect and all that jazz. Peace