#15 She is watching you... to keep you motivated

That was a such rollercoaster week for me. Firstly, one of my friends got into pixel art a little. Surely she would struggle and create awful things like me at the start, right? Wrong!!! She is amazing, making incredibly looking animations on her first try. I'm proud of her, but also jealous a little. I know I shouldn't, and I do not want to be mad at her, it's amazing that she can create beautiful art, but somehow I still a little am. Because of that I'm also incredibly angry at myself, I want to support her and help as much as I can, but I'm afraid I will not be able to put my heart in it.

Sorry, I don't have any magical solution for this problem. If you will ever happen to be in the similar situation, just support your friends. Have fun together instead of comparing your arts.

Second thing is muuuuch funnier. This piece was made for my best friend. I always wanted to give him something created entirely by me, and that was my chance.

I sent him this, we had a little talk, and then I wanted to send him time-lapse of my work (all of them should be on Twitter if you also, want to see. Unfortunately, their size is too big for this site, so I have to do it this way, I'm sorryyyyy...). He got confused because HE WAS SURE I just took a screenshot of someone's work and send to him. To be honest, I'm baffled as fuck. That my mediocre work was taken as art of some real artist.

I took inspiration from another pixelart. I loved the idea and wanted to try it on a different character. To be honest, looking at this I almost gave up, how can I even try to create something so complicated, with so many details and so much life in it. But you have to push through it, it will be better, and if not you will at least learn. Lesson: Crossing your boundaries might be scary, but it's the best way of learning.

TOTALLY looks like an eye, no doubt about it. For real, I love pixelart for this. In normal art, the more an element resembles its real word counterpart, the better. Here I can draw two straight lines and it will mean nothing. Add a circle around it and suddenly it's a face. Our brain makes it possible, and it never fails to impress me.

Scary little demon. Another: Oh shit, I should give up moment, here.

This eye pattern is so pretty. I didn't manage to make it perfect but somehow with a little glimpse of light, it looks so cute.

Skin color is always such a hassle for me. It's always too white, too orange, too pink, too brown. I feel like every time I pixel face I have to use a different shade. Maybe it's normal, I should pick it, once rest of the art, like hair and eyes are done.

Giving shade to eyes it also much more important that I thought. Without it, they look plain and dead.

Here I wanted to show exactly how eye looks. Eyelashes also help to make it look more realistic, even tho they are just 2-3 lines of two colors.

Picture of the whole progress. As you can see, I gave a little shade to the pupil of the eyes, don't think this is necessary, but looks cool.

Here is the glow up! I have no idea why interpret white object inside an eye as cute, but it's a trick you should remember.

Changed yellow parts to be more vibrant. I think it looks much better in contrast with the dark brown top and deep purple of the middle.

Yea, skin color changed again... I have no idea how to choose them. As you can see, little elements makes all the difference! These glowy parts are putting so much work.

The hair was too similar to the skin color, so I outlined it.

Here's the magic, shade! I really like how simple they are to make. Lesson: To make a shade just more or less follow the shape, make it bigger and more rough.

I added a second layer of outline on the hair, if the colors are clashing too much, it's a great solution. Also, to fill up the space, random shaped were added (you can see that on the final piece they are a little different. That's because my friend gave a fun idea what to do with them, but the change is so insignificant that I didn't record it)

Changed the tone of the shade... Yea, she went thru more skin color changes than one famous singer, as well gave shade a little outline. I have leaving big plain, one colored spots like this, so I had to it.

I'm still so happy that it was mistaken as real work. Today's lesson is: have fun with the others, but focus on your own journey. Not to compete with them, but to compete with yourself and change what is possible for you! I believe, you can do it (if I could, you are kinda required, I think)