Urban Era - need some art help

[pwnzerIV]

Ok, since my last post I've started doing some of my own art - usually editing pre-existing art. I've spent a good deal of time on this now and need some help in certain parts of it.

My Gnomes - they have serious structural differences from other characters and I can't seem to make them very well. I can't even use a previous structure because of their shape.

I have some more Gnomes to brush up but beyond that the rest of my art is at least presentable.

Even though I found out that I would have to do most of this art myself (OMG) it's actually coming along nicely and I hope to have the era playable by the end of the week.

[Jetrel]

For my first tip, I would note that colors - especially his beard, for example, are not necessarily the single, uniform color they're supposed to be. In fact, as a painting style gets more and more realistic, you come to realize that the colors of objects in the real world are more often than not very different from what they're "supposed" to be. Trees may seem green to your mind, but correctly sampled by a digitized photo, parts of them may be any color of the rainbow, depending on how the light plays on them.

What is relevant here is - those arms, and the head, are going to go through a ranged of shades - they won't change color, here, but they'll change their shade dramatically. A great reference to look at for "skin colors" is Li'sar and Delfador from HttT. Look carefully at the series of colors that they go through as they go from the center* of an object, to the edge, and try to imitate that.

* This will give you pillowshading - the next step is to realize that this "bright center point," also known as the "specular highlight" is often not in the "center" of a given object (such as an arm), and is actually in another area dependent on the shape and position (in 3d space) of that object. But just work on the gradient for now.

(This is what his sprite looks like zoomed in)

[Dragon Master]

First of all, he's facing the wrong direction, he should be facing the bottom right corner of the screen. Also, he's got no feet and a big black line inder him. The pnatsa are decent, but the shirt needs to have an actual shape, right now his chest looks like a tube. The skin needs shading.