[C+C] Pixel art for a Monster Fighter needing some critique

[Tals]

Hey guys, I've been working on a game for quite a while now and was hoping to get some advice on how to push my pixel art from being merely competent to being decent.

It's a creature brawler, kind of like Pokemon but with much more involved battles. So I have a lot of creature designs that need to be very notable and iconic.
(I also have concept art for all of these but for the sake of not flooding the thread more than I already will be, I'll only provide that on a request basis)

Creatures (I have a ton more of these, but this is a good sample of what I'm producing):
 

A Boss:


Battlefield:


In game screenshot of it all coming together:


Feel free to throw any kind of critique at me, I'm here looking to improve and I'm only going to do that with change. Also let me know if I broke any rules, I've lurked here for a while tried to follow them all but I may have done something wrong, and I'll fix that up if I did.

[dpixel]

The creatures are quite nice. 
The platform seem out of perspective.  Almost like it's leaning too far forward. 
Also, some shadows under the creatures would pull it all together.
Nice project you got there.   

[Friend]

creatures are nice.  could all be hugely improoved very quickly cuz the drawing underneath is good.  the creatures mostly suffer from poor contrast and weak shading.  no time to do a complete edit but here r ideas

[Tals]

The platform seem out of perspective.  Almost like it's leaning too far forward. 

It has some awkwardness to it born from the way the squares need to be a fixed size, so it's a forced unrealistic perspective. It could use some tweaking on that front but I'm not really sure how to fix it without destroying it.

Also, some shadows under the creatures would pull it all together.

You're right, and to be honest I'd not even thought about that. I'll work some shadows in to the engine tomorrow.

Nice project you got there.   

Thanks!

creatures are nice.  could all be hugely improoved very quickly cuz the drawing underneath is good.  the creatures mostly suffer from poor contrast and weak shading.  no time to do a complete edit but here r ideas

You're right, shading is a huge problem area of mine. You made him pop way more than my version does, though I look at it and think there is probably a medium that fits better. How's this?

[Seiseki]

I think you're just used to a very subdued palette.. It takes time to adjust.
It's not only the contrast, but the hues aren't very vibrant.

The edit looks good to me, settling for something in between seems like a step back.

[Friend]

i'd say the contrast is still a bit too low, the colors still too murky, but it's whatever looks good to your eye bro    i dont think my version has too much contrast, but i envision your art to be more vibrant


perhaps something like this

i wish i had more time, but i could come back later if you want ^^  it's not really a problem of your base colors but how you choose light tones and shadows that cause everything to be murky. 

[Tals]

I think you're just used to a very subdued palette.. It takes time to adjust.
It's not only the contrast, but the hues aren't very vibrant.

The edit looks good to me, settling for something in between seems like a step back.

A fair point, and probably an overarching theme amongst my work. I'll perhaps take a look at my colour choices as a whole across the creatures and how I can improve in their application.

i'd say the contrast is still a bit too low, the colors still too murky, but it's whatever looks good to your eye bro    i dont think my version has too much contrast, but i envision your art to be more vibrant


perhaps something like this

i wish i had more time, but i could come back later if you want ^^  it's not really a problem of your base colors but how you choose light tones and shadows that cause everything to be murky. 

I definitely wouldn't say no to a deeper critique when you had the time. You seem to be leading me along a good track. I'm looking through your post history and getting a good idea of what you mean by better contrast and I'm going to take some time tomorrow to attempt to get my colour picking on better lines.

I probably should have noted this in the opening post but in action these sprites spend most of their time scaled to 3x or 4x if the user is playing the game at full screen, so some of the small details that get washed out when dropping the number of colours used (like when you merge the brown midtones) I don't really want to lose. The flipside of that of course is if my colours are looking no good, it's not doing those details any justice anyway.

Thanks for the advice thus far, it's all stuff I can work with which is making me feel very thankful.

Edit: Hows this one looking?

[dpixel]

Also, some shadows under the creatures would pull it all together.

You're right, and to be honest I'd not even thought about that. I'll work some shadows in to the engine tomorrow.

I just build the shadows right into the sprite.  It's easier, especially if there's a lot of dynamic movement that the shadow would follow....such as an extended leg, arm, etc.

[Seiseki]

I messed around with it a bit.
Removed one of the tentacles as I think it makes it clearer.
I also added some protruding facial features.

[Friend]

thats so sexy seiseki!  gorgeous.  the tentacle over the eye area is a little funky, but damn.  a ton to learn for the future in his edit.

unfortunately reworking all your sprites would take a big amount of time :<

i did another edit showing how you might improve all your creatures relatively quickly with different colors.  though some monsters admittedly could use tweaking to the drawing, like the arms of the racoon.



in the pink monster you might better understand my thought process.  i kept the base pink color the same, but darkened the shadow color.  this instantly added more depth.  also introduced a blueish shadow color only to add some hue variation- when every color in a ramp is so linear in hue, it looses a bit of depth as well imo.