Hello, I'm new here and tentatively posting after reading the rules. I'm working on a game - most of it is done in pixel art, but it also utilises things not traditionally associated with pixel art such as smooth gradients, transparency effects, shaders etc. With all of these effects over the top, my deficiencies as a pixel artist aren't quite as obvious and I perhaps haven't been as diligent as I could have been with technique... But I would like to also give players the option of playing the game without such effects, and after peeling back the fancy effects I want the art to still look good - so I think I need to clean up my act a bit and become a better pixel artist.

Up until now, I've mainly been working on mechanics and tilesets but I've decided it would be nice to have some detailed backgrounds, kind of like establishing shots for the different areas. The resolution I'm working in is 640x360. Immediately, it has been harder to fill such a large area with interesting pixel art after working on smaller 32x32 or 64x64 sprites for so long!

If any of you pixel art gurus could take a look and offer any comments on what could be improved it would be much appreciated. Particularly if there are any areas that stand out as needing attention or techniques that I am perhaps misusing or should be practising more. Also any comments on anything from the colour scheme to the composition are appreciated. I've considered dropping the game resolution lower, but want to avoid this if possible due to the size of my character (32 x 64).

If anyone has any experience in drawing detailed game backgrounds and has some tips on workflow that would be cool too. I'm still finding my feet with this, and this piece was a bit of a frankenstein project, all over the place - it was started in Pyxel Edit, the clouds were done in Pro Motion (because I like the dither brush) and the rest done in Photoshop (because I'm most comfortable with the interface).

I should add that in motion, this background will have a smooth colour gradient, animated light rays, parralax scrolling clouds and overlay effects. I've stripped out any of that non pixel art related stuff for this image so that I can get feedback on what IS pixel art in the picture.  Thanks for any feedback