It seems I must have gone through at least five or six... possibly more different styles to find the right one to do for my cutscenes. Trying to find the right balance between what I'm comfortable with and what is serious enough to work has been difficult, but I think I (finally) found the style I want to stick with.
Note that these are the high quality images before they are shrunk down to half to fit the proper size.
I would also like to ask Moogle once again to consider having the feature in CP where you can click on an image to enlarge it.
BEFORE
AFTER
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BEFORE
AFTER
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I think this'll be it, finally! Comments and suggestions are welcome.
They do look better than the other ones, but for some reason when I look at the first one's redo, I get the impression that her face has the "shrink wrap" filter from photoshop. The other one looks like her face got fatter.
The first one is pretty decent, the face is a little too wrinkly though, unless the person is supposed to be middle-aged. There's just something about the shading too that weirds me out.
The second one is really bizarre though, in the old version it looks like a cute kid, this one has enormous scary alien eyes.
The level of contrast is weird. The faces are perfectly clear as if they were in a brightly lit room and they have very little contrast in their own shading, but everything else is pitch black. This is pretty much impossible unless there's a bright light focusing on their faces that doesn't light anything else in the room. It would look a lot better if you could see some objects in the background (I don't know if there are any objects because I can't see them, but there could be), and if the faces were only partially lit, with the rest in shadow.
I think you might've tried to add too many details and ended up throwing the lighting off a bit.
For instance, on the first image's second and third version, it looks like there's an imprint on the kid's forehead and the cheeks look like they're bulging out.
The lighting in your original first version, however, is simple and effective.
It would only be awesome if you could somehow combine your original shading with your new drawing style.
And no matter how I look at it, your second images are always going to be creepy. (The eyes, they're too big!)
♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪
