My 1st Pixel Work

It's definitely not finished. Comments/suggestions are welcome.

Previous thread on Pixel Art:
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=70559

Looks alright for a first go but I am not sure what sort of light would make that pattern.
It'd probably look better with just the specular (is that right?), the normal ball colour and the shaded area.
That does make it look a bit shiney though so you might be right but just need some closer blending.

The shadow's wrong. It's in the wrong place, too small, and the wrong shape. Think about where the lightsource is coming from. :)

@tonyg

Do you mean more of a gradient?

@big10p
Is this any better?

Looks neat, somthing wrong with the reflection though, it looks like glass.

The shadow's in the right place now but still needs to be bigger and more oval shaped.

Shine a flashlight at a spherical object at the same angle as in your drawing to see what it should look like.

What Andy_A said.

When I tried out using the flashlight I also found out my shadding on the ball wasn't big enough. Here's the new one:


Still might need some editing.

Shadow looks good!

The only thing you might want to consider is to either use a few more colors or use dithering to smooth the transition between light and dark colors on the baseball.

Nice work!

Thanks, Andy.
I tried adding another (darker than the shadow) into the depths of the shadow, but it didn't look right. Right now there are four shades of white on the baseball; I'll add a couple more. (After that I think I'm going to move on to another piece :)

I'm done working on this piece even though it could still be improved...
Here's the update:



Thanks for all of the suggestions and help; I think it definetly looks MUCH better!

Looking Better! The Shadow still looks funny to me...

The specular light spot on the ball indicates that the light comes from the front, so the shadow ought to be cast to the upper left behind the ball, not the lower left in front of it... Plus the shadow seems too dark considering the brightness of the rest of the scene.

(If there were two light sources to account for the specular light reflection, then there still should be a 2nd shadow...)

I don't think so. The specular is on the far right side. That means the light must be around 135 degrees to the right of the viewer:

(It's a rough model.)

I think the red stitches on the ball are too symmetric. I'm, not saying that it wouldn't be possible in nature, but it's highly improbable to see the ball exactly from that angle :)

It's true--but If I was trying to achieve a completely real and athentic environment, I woud also make the green look like grass :)