Alright! Firstly, I am the vector sprite and pixel tile artist for a pokemon mmo fan-game, Pokemon Universe. I am currently working on this alone, as it isn't easy finding artists, but the game has a decent sized team of around a dozen. There is a job thread on this site if you are interested. This game is my first experience of pixel art, and it's been a bit of a steep learning curve with really not very much feedback (particularly from other pixel artists), so I'd very much appreciate any advice.

Below are a couple of screenshots to give you a feel for what I have so far. I'm looking for general comments as well as specific points on any of the items. Let me know if I should post individual elements separately as tilesets. Apologies for large pictures.





I am aware of the obvious errors, such as misalignment of boards on a house roof and misplaced house tiles; some blending errors on the short/long grass interface; missing character shadows; variable shadow colour, angle and lightness (particularly bad for trees). There is also some cheating with the light/shadow on the long grass and dirt, using a soft brush which has added many many colours. All of this, and some of the points mentioned below could be (and arguably should have been) fixed before posting here, but I have been working on this for four months now, unfortunately it will take a great deal longer to make everything perfect.

Here is a list of my notes:

• The water will probably be completely changed to a system with "real" depth, i.e. a semi-transparent overlay on top of cliff-type drops in elevation.
• The shore tiles look more at home in a muddly jungle, so please try to think of them in that context. I will be making something more suitable for grassy areas.
• The rocky ledges don't feel as though they are standing vertical from the ground, perhaps more shadow and the base, with grass growing up around it would help. In fact, the bases of all objects need better interaction with the ground.
• I think there is something wrong with the rock, perhaps perspective, it also looks like it's made out of clay.
• I have not kept careful track of colour count, and I am certain there are many "stray" colours that could be tidied, but I don't have time to clean it up at the moment. The game is not colour-limited, so it's not a huge issue, but of course pixel art looks much better when it's kept clean. I will fix it eventually.
• I really don't know a lot about colour palettes, so I think maybe it's a bit confused colourwise.

This is probably a real pain to comment on, as there is so much there! Any advice, even if it's small and only relating to one part, would be greatly appreciated.

Alais

Update: