[C+C] First pixel art post

[drax013]

Hello all, this will be my first pixel art post and I hope I have done it right. ( if not pleasee help me correct it )
  I have been messing with pixel art for about a year now and this is the first full image I have made using tiles I also have made.


 I could use some general feedback about this image, I have gotten some from friends and family but most of that has been " wow that looks cool" , " you did a great job" ... ect.. while heartening it is not really helpful.

[Eyawiin]

First thing I notice is that the ground is very repetetive and it looks like there was only one tile used over and over again.
Other than that I also think that the outlines of the leaves in the darker sections are a bit too dark which males it look a bit weird compared to the stump.

But really good work overall and i hope i could help

[drax013]

thank you!, yes it was done with only one tile... I wanted to see how well it flowed just like that but I will be making a couple more ground tiles, also I see what you mean about the shading of those leaves on the stump! i had not noticed it before 

[drax013]

So I works on the 2 changes suggested and here are the modifications

  this first one has 3 different tiles            second one is just a single tile

 

  i messed with the shading a little bit where the leaves overlap the stump
 

[Samaramon]

I really love the leaves tile I think you did a great job.

[eishiya]

The three different ground tiles don't look like three different tiles, because the grassy bits are evenly spaced. Have some clusters and open areas. Vary the arrangements, not just the shapes of the grass/dirt clusters.

[Eyawiin]

The new ground tiles you made look really nice to me!
I would recommend that you rebuild the scene you did before (with the building in the middle) but replace the ground tile with the new ones, so you can really see if they bring the wanted variety.

The new shading on the tree looks much better now, but i felt like the colors of the stump looked kind of washed out compared to the leaves so I made a quick edit to see if it looks better if you increase the contrast of the stump.
I also tried to tone down the contrast of the outlines of the leaves a little bit as i felt like it may look better that way.

Here is the edit:


To recap:

1. The first one is the original that you posted

2. On the second one I only increased the contrast of the stump

3. On the last one I changed the contrast of the stump AND the leaves


Finally I decided that I had to try and edit the contrast of the alone standing stumps as well and compare it in an image:




I hope I could be of help!

[MysteryMeat]

Those trees (and I mean this without any sort of hyperbole or insult) kind of hurt my eyes to try and pick out against the grass. I'd try to shift some more yellow or brown on the trees there, and maybe go over both to try and cut down detail a bit so both aren't warring for focus.

It's especially noticeable with the trees, but I'd also reccomend you save the heavy forest grass for patches along the edge rather than have that be the main body. Dirt or rocks or the like should be the main body, moss maybe? The texture is very pleasing on its own, but paired together with the other objects in the picture they clash pretty bad.

For example, the way the leaves get cut off by the stone structure makes it look like it's hovering a bit above the grass.
It's a lot of extra work, but specially-made edge tiling to prevent that issue is a very good way to get around that.

[drax013]

Thank you all for the excellent suggestions, This being my first full tileset I figured I would have plenty of redo work to do. I was noticing that the contrast between the ground and the leaves was... rough..... I will definitely be refining all of that. Thank you for the suggestion of clumped grass eishiya that is a wonderful idea! Also I think the third rendering of the tree you did looks much better, the outlines I had on it made it look.. off..  I have been working in pyxel edit and I have not figured out how to mess with contrast in the program yet.. maybe I'm blind and have just overlooked the function... 

 MysteryMeat - I totally agree with you, I was thinking of making the "grass" tiles more like patches on a dirt background but have not yet mad a dirt tile. I was also thinking dirt would make the ferns look better too... or so i hope.

[drax013]

    the top right piece is the original ground tiles with the original bush/tree

  Ok I have toned down the ground tiles and added some shadow to the forest tiles, I also tried to smooth out the outline shading on the bush/tree leaves as well ass did 2 different shades for the stump. The shadow isn't permanent yet and will be defined later.

[MysteryMeat]

Looking somewhat better! I'd say add some leaf piles around the roots of trees to ease the transition to the ground tiles some, and for the wall trees I'd reduce that second layer so it looks more like a cross-section than a flat top. Like, expand the dark center out more.
I'd also reccomend reducing how many lines you work with in here, working with solid chunks of color instead of using the lines to divide the leaves might look a bit better.

Like so:

Terrible colors on my part, but hopefully sells the concept well enough! limit your use of the darks more, otherwise it looks like scales or gaps in the leaves. You could even use it for that exact purpose (as in, patches of darkness where the leaves aren't there to break up the pattern and look more organic) but the big thing to fix is the noisy inner lines!

[Aniki]

Hey, I messed with the colors a tad. The biggest problem for me was how saturated the ground is, it's dominating the image.
Here's what it looks like just taking the ground saturation down a bit:



Also you've got like a bazillion colors. I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life but I find limiting your pallet to 3-5 shades to really help unify images and make them cleaner.

[MysteryMeat]

oh man, that is a HUGE improvement on aniki's version! I still reccomend adding some leafpile tiles and dirt patches to ease transitions, but definitely snag the new colors he's slapped up.

[drax013]

WOW! that dose look a ton better! What can I say I really like colors and can go overboard sometime  I will be doing a huge revamp of thew whole tileset I think. I will post a redone scene when I am done, Thank you guys so much for all the help!!! 

[drax013]

So I tried to take the advice I was given and reworked both the ground and the forest edge tiles, Im thinking ill use the green ground tile without grass tuffs on it and make sporadic grass patches over the more brown ground tile.


 no shadow on this set yet.