Hi All,

I am working on a portrait that will be used for a game, and would welcome feedback. I would like to get this first character about right, and then will work on some of the other characters (some male, some female, different skin tones, eye colors, will add clothes, etc). The in-game size will be quite small, so really fine details will not show up well, and I'd like to avoid gradient colors. It's turning out to be quite a challenge to get the "essence" of a portrait right - picking what the defining features and geometries are. It's getting closer, but she has kind of a blank, emotionless stare (I was going for a "neutral" expression, but this is more like zoned out! Anyway, the eyes are a little bigger than in reality - which is by intent, since I need them to be big enough to show up clearly when scaled down to game size - so somewhere in between manga and western style eyes. And something else seems a little off with it... but I've been staring at it too long to figure out what it is.

Here is full size



And here is game size. Note most of the eye details are lost, but you can clearly see eye color which is important, because I want to differentiate between characters.



Anyway, thanks for taking a look!

I've never had much training in art or artistic style. But I have the understanding that no human face is perfectly symmetrical. Always one eye is a little higher than the other. One is a little more tilted than the other. Most of the time one eyelid is a little higher or lower than the other. And usually one iris is a slightly different color than the other. No one's nose is perfectly straight, eyebrows are arched differently side to side, and etc., etc.

You could try changing her gaze to look off to the side slightly, instead of staring at us. Maybe a little smile? I think the eyebrows are too close together. From my understanding, the inner edge of the eyebrow is usually aligned to the inner edge of the eye.

Looks like she's halfway there on the "smokey eye" makeup style. Usually people's eyebrows and eyelashes are the same color as their hair. (That's how you can always tell a natural blonde, if they aren't wearing makeup.) So either she's not a natural blonde, or she's wearing makeup, right?

I like all the individual parts of the face. It's just a matter of arranging them more naturally. That's all that's really left to do, as far as I see. I think the hair looks good too.

Maybe some earrings peeking out through the hair? Will she be clothed, or is that coming later?

I think it's nice work, overall!

Iris seems stretched and not circular. The whole face seems not high enough. Maybe the eye seems too large for a realistic character?
There are alot guides around the basic face proportions, like these 1 2 3.
Even there are manga style tutorials for larger eyes.

The shading seems flat on the face, the nose can be hardly seen.
Maybe check this topic as well.

Hey guys, thanks so much for taking a look. I appreciate the feedback. Clothing is planned for later, but will be a separate layer in the game, placed on top of this one. I totally missed the non- round iris. I wasn't all that happy with the nose either, and was struggling with drawing it straight on - most of the time its shown slightly to one side or the other.

So, I fixed the iris, made the eyebrows closer to hair color and slightly asymmetrical, added some shadows around the eye sockets and nose, elongated the face a little, reshaped the lips and added highlights, and extended the body a little (the final file has to be square, and the former drawing was actually wider than it was tall, so I added on a little to the body.)

The eyebrows/shadow area still seem a little off, although I can't seem to place where. Also the shadow on her cleavage is probably a little too high anatomically speaking, but thought it looked weird with nothing there.

Further comments welcome, and thanks again!

Full size image


Game size image

I don't know how much depth or realism detail that you want. But maybe the hair would throw a little shadow here and there around the edge of the face? To me, the armpits are too high. The little cleavage shadow could be there, if she were overweight. If she's thin, I think it wouldn't show at all.

Nice - much improved!