[WIP] Spaceships

[Oltar]

These two ships are my third attempt at pixel art, I hope to do more. Have been made for a game. Comments and crits are really apreciated. 



-Current-

[Oltar]

A battleship alien. I retouched the colors of the red spaceship (but not too much).

[Oltar]

A new spaceship and I retouched some pixels of the big spaceship of the aliens.

[Oltar]

Well, I redesign the spaceship because I think the old spaceship itīs a bit generic, and I want a bigger sprite. Is in process 

[Atnas]

That's so much better. Here's why:
More flat planes of a solid color make it much more readable, ditching the fuzzy shading style, which I don't particularly care for and which hurts readability.
You made use of more desaturated colors, which I think are easier on the eye.
There's a more evident light source.

Here's what I think you should do:
Make more use of the colors you have.
Saturate some colors a bit more than you have to increase color identity. (I'm actually having a debate with myself whether saturation is a preference or if it really does help on a black background.)
Get rid of highlights, they disrupt color identity. You can keep them, if you want, but too much isn't a great thing. Build form with shadow.

And to show you what I mean, because so much is lost in words,

My shading is not correct because things so geometric like ships aren't my forte, natural things like animals are (lame, yeah) but I hope you get the idea.

Just a question, though. The old ships lacked an outline, which worked on the dark background. These new ones have one. Are they going to be on the same background? Depending on the color of your outline it could either buffer against the black as a sort of rough AA, or make the ship pop from the background.

Take what you will, but if something seems wrong to you then don't.

[Turbo]

If i may refer you to an old post, regarding this subject:
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=436.0
Here's the mentioned video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4IfnY7Fl4g

And there's other threads around Pixelation regarding ships (there was a featured one about a shoot'em up game, a few months ago). Do a search.
I think these ships look good, but with 1 or 2 more colors to smoothen them out, and some stronger highlights to indicate metal, they would pop considerably more.

[Oltar]

Atnas says:
Make more use of the colors you have. The old ships lacked an outline, which worked on the dark background. These new ones have one. Are they going to be on the same background? Depending on the color of your outline it could either buffer against the black as a sort of rough AA, or make the ship pop from the background.
Yeah I know, itīs my working path, first I put the palette base, and later I put more highlights.
Yes, these new ones have an outline, and they going to be on the same background, but, Iīm thinking to redesign the alien spaceships.
Thank you for the crits.

Thank you for the links Turbo 

One question, maybe I do the background first?

[Oltar]

Another update.

[Turbo]

Looks nice, reads very clearly and the colors are easy on the eyes.
However, you are "pillow-shading" the cockpit glass.
Furthermore, It'd be interesting if you'd use shading on the ship's hull to better show its shape. And my comment on using highlights (bright ones) to convey a metal surface for the hull still stands.

One question, maybe I do the background first?

A background could be useful in helping you determining color schemes, which ones will combine well between the background and the ships, and giving you a certain pointer in which colors to choose.

[Oltar]

New update some pixels touched and a redesign of spaceship.

[Oltar]

Ok I think itīs finished  . I change the red pallete for the pallete that Ptoing used on another post (http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=7078.0) and added some black and dithering.
CC are apreciated.

[PypeBros]

looking at the left wing, do you really need a highlight on the "grey" area ?
My feeling is that if you instead had a shadow there, it would be more suggesting that grey parts are thinner, maybe some deathly/pheary blades.

i'm also undecided on whether dithering improves the piece or not.

[Oltar]

Thank you Pype for the comments.
Touched some pixels, I think itīs better.

[Oltar]

Ok new update, retouch some pixels of the ship and make some items, and shoots.

[PypeBros]

i'd even go with something like this:

(trying to keep within the 15-colors constraint)

[tehwexxl0rz]

I actually like this version a lot better:



It looks like the reinforced metal plating is a special custom option for heavy combat!

If the gray parts are flush with the rest of the ship as it appears in the latest version and PypeBros's edit, it just looks like a paint job. To make them look thinner than the rest of the wings I think would only serve to make the ship look weaker. (Plus, it doesn't make sense from a technical/practical standpoint.)

[PypeBros]

hmm .. so the grey things would be additional blindage ? ...
that could give the initial graphics more sense, indeed.

[tehwexxl0rz]

Mine edit:



The shading seemed off, so i tried to fix that. Also, remember that if your game will be displayed on a consistently dark background you can take advantage of that to anti-alias the edges some....