It's a shame hardly anyone posts here but those posting entries - says I whilst posting an entry , This challenge has had a very long shelf-life, the mafia portrait especially attracting a ton of interest. It's a great way of getting people to participate and test themselves regardless of experience and I hope it's continued at some point.

There are some absolute gems here, Stefano's & Manjaman's in particular this page.  



I did these a while ago but never got around to sharing them. I really used them as practice for pixel-specific technique; working harmoniously with the grid, finding pleasing shapes, AA. This stuff is second nature to old hands here and there are some some great guides on the forum - thanks Helm but you really have to get your hands dirty.

Edit - Updated image based on feedback

Nice catch Arachne , the effect is certainly too strong in my edit, but I have seen similar examples before.
Vertical reflection   Stream example

Painted ripples or a Sine effect applied to the water could look really nice.

Now that I look at it again I think what's making it look strange is the blue/purple in the shade. I think actually it should appear relatively warm & saturated in the shallows because of the 'polishing' effect and the blue shift would only become pronounced in deeper water.

Thorough explanation of the many variables to consider by the venerable Mr. Gurney below.
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2007/12/water-reflections-part-1.html

That's quite a lot to mull over, sorry Sharm
  

Hi Sharm, you've obviously put a lot of effort into these tiles and it shows  , lovely polish on the trees and dirt tiles. Everything here is quite conventional but no less pretty for it.

Some stuff you could improve on -

The water is a very odd colour at the moment and the sparkling animation pretty rudimentary. Think about what a stream might look like in this situation in a photograph. Given the brightness of the scene and also the perspective, a slow-moving stream would be reflective and therefore take on the blue of the sky.

The grass looks more like wallpaper presently; there's no real attempt at shading. Treat it more like you have the foliage and It'd look miles better.

More minor stuff; no foreshortening or overlap on the bare tree making it look flat, try to limit the amount of distracting detail in your shadows and a greater variety of foliage (small trees, flowers etc.) would be nice.

I've loosely painted on most of my suggestions here.



Also thatch would looks lovely here

This is rather charming little tileset Chris, but there are quite a few things which you might improve upon.   


First, I really like your palette although you're not really using it to it's potential here; almost all your tiles are 2-3 colours and straight ramps. Mix it up a bit

Lighting - Everything here is pretty flat, there's barely any shadow and those there are aren't bold enough to really sell the effect properly.

Texture - Quite a few busy & distracting repeating patterns to be used (presumably) over large areas.

A couple of specifics; I find the cliffs hard to parse, no sense of height and the sides don't read as shaded. Secondly those trees... I know there's a long, illustrious tradition of awful flat midget trees in RPG's but they're super super lazy. Those trees actually inspired an edit, mainly in order to banish them.

I've roughed out a few ideas for how you could better render/utilise colours, avoid repetitive patterns and also some stylistic stuff. The houses suggested pine woods to me so I indulged myself. I recall from a previous thread that you're working with limited tiles so not all of this might be feasible and I guess you were aiming for a less representational look overall but there's a few ideas you could take away from it.