CGAN April 2015 Challenge - Me, Myself, and I

Valence wrote: what matters is the pixel dimensions.

What he said.

Just done a little comparison of some of the pictures posted in here and I see that Cherry's is 1000px square while Hobby's is 599 by 500 which regardless of the ppi value means that it is just one quarter of the resolution of Cherry's hence the apparent pixellation. If you ignore the ppi and just save it at 1000px when posting on here it'll look fine.
EDIT: (Maths Nerd: Hmmm, I can see where you got that one quarter figure from by using the 500px value. But if you consider the 599 value as well I think you'll find that the fraction is closer to three tenths rather than one quarter. )

Elsewhere....

Ed: That looks great fun and has really developed quickly. Keep going.

Schizo: Really well stylized. It looks like a movie poster with really bold and dynamic angles.

Micro: I like the mood you're getting now. Be careful with the lighting on the face and emphasize the glow on that lightsabre and it'll be fantastic.

And Cherry: Love the dewdrop spider's webs! Love it.

Forgot to post progress...still working on the squishies and lighting....and composition. Lets just say I'm not happy with it yet.

EDIT: I've noticed that the image on the forum doesn't have the punch that the image has in the program. I've double checked color setting in the file and when I exported the image. So I don't know.

Jessie: looks even more melancholy! But that's not a bad thing. I like the way you've developed and shaded that hand, the light glowing onto the palm looks impressive. In your previous post I couldn't work out how that shading was going to go and now it looks good in ways I didn't imagine. Your vectorish wips are always educational to me.

Wonderful update jessie I really like all these shiny effects - even all this blue has a really really melancholy feeling. The fish scales are also really nice detailed

Worked on mine again... hopefully I don't look like an alien any longer.

I don't want to be too nitpicky but if you look at your ref Cherry, you'll see that your neck ends much higher than where you put the necklace - of course the length of the necklace plays in too, but right now it's a confusing link between the two bits of water. If you follow the ref, your necklace (if on a short chain) would actually be above the orb of water... And in that higher position the water would still be one "unit". If that makes sense?

I placed the necklace there for using it as the sundown and I painted shoulders for depicting a little more upright posture. ButI can also place the necklace a bit more above if you think this would work better?

Stuff that's not grey.

Ed: Nice colours in the landscape. The receding aerial perspective works well. The red in the hat seems a little overpowering but that's probably just because it's a flat colour at the moment. Adding the light and shade may tone it down nicely.

...and Cherry: I didn't comment in the previous post because I was having a think about it. I didn't notice the neck thing until it was mentioned but having pondered for a while I think there are two differences between your pic and the ref.
1: in the ref the head is bowed little obscuring the neck and the shoulders almost line up with the mouth whereas the painting has the head position higher relative to the shoulders which exposes the neck.
And 2: in the ref the hair lower down curves inwards again obscuring the neck and in the painting the hair curves outward which again exposes more of the neck.

If the neck is exposed in these ways then it would appear a little wider. Also darkening the neck below the chin would also push it a little further back and stop it from looking so extended from the face, and if you still wanted a bit of underlit glow then a bit of rim light delineating the chin and jaw would again separate things.

If it still looks a little awkward then I'd suggest taking another reference photo with the head raised a little and compare that to the painting.
It's still a terrific picture though.