Pixel Portrait

GIF

PNG

Here I did a pixel portrait of myself. I uploaded two different file formats of the image, GIF and PNG. Although I've been asked to identify the visual difference between the two file formats, I don't see any difference in colour, value, or line. If there are differences, I cannot see them at all.

For this self-portrait I intentionally made it have noticeable pixels, like in 8-bit gaming. Because the quality of the photo is so low, making a portrait that accurately represented myself was a challenge. To do this, I made sure to accentuate my hair and eyes because they are my most unique features. I made my eyes black in the portrait even though they are actually dark brown in real life. However, unless you are up close to my face, my eyes look black. I also made sure that the shape and colour of my hair matched reality. I made my hair slightly darker than it actually is as well to get the idea across that it is dark. I also did it because most people think my hair is black, so I made it almost black to represent how other people see me. For my colour palette, I tried to limit it to a few colours to keep the cartoon effect of the picture. Although my face actually has small gradient hues and values, I made it one solid colour in the portrait that I felt was the average/overall skin tone. I did the same thing with my hair as well to reduce the amount of colours used.
 For my shirt, I made it a red blouse because I often wear blouses, and my favourite colour is dark red. Although I have only one shirt like this, I think it represents me the best.

To achieve this picture, I took a quick photo of myself using Photobooth on the computer to work off of for a more accurate result. I opened a new file in Photoshop at the size of 100x150 pixels and 72 pixels/inch. I then dragged the image into Photoshop and re-scaled it so it filled the frame.
After that, I created a new layer on top of the photo and drew on that with the pen tool.
During the actual drawing process of the image, the only part I traced off of the background photo was the hair and the eyebrows. Besides that, I drew the image by eye because I found it easier to capture my overall appearance by drawing myself how I see myself instead of tracing the actual photo.