I feel that it's more convincing. Do not try to go overboard with detailing background stuff though... if it gets to a point where the player is distracted looking at details of minor stuff, you'll want to tone down the detailing. I prefer the top grass over the bottom personally.

I still think it's a good idea to make it so the character is much larger than the game tiles though... think about it... those are some ENORMOUS weeds. Downsizing your tiles to 16x16 also means four times less work.

For shading, here's something I really think you should consider. Your hues don't change going from light to dark. You could have a yellower green for the lightest areas but bluer greens for the shadows and outlines. There's a lot of creative freedom here you're not yet taking advantage of, and it easily creates coloring less boring to look at.


^Why have the left instead of something a bit more interesting like on the right?

@Pix3M:
First of all, I realize that he's small, but I wanted the player to see as many tiles as possible, for easier fields arrangement. The house is empty, but for now it's just a placeholder that will be reshaped - I need to know what will be inside first [probably some chests, a kitchen, wardrobe? and stuff like that] - then I will divide it into several smaller rooms

Could you explain the "somberness" a bit closer? I'm not sure what does it mean :p The game was even darker before, like this:

Seeing as many tiles as possible? I can see where you're coming from. I like to think that if we imagine a ridiculous extreme with 8x8 tiles on a HD monitor played at fullscreen unscaled, things would be very annoying to look at. Obviously, there must be a line to be drawn, though we do seem to draw the line in different places.



If I were to crop this so it's at a resolution of 320x240, it's much harder to get lost in a seemingly endless sea of nothing.

IMO, I can picture several possible approaches:

1. You can simply make your character bigger
2. Or, you can make your tiles smaller and cut down on your game resolution.

IMO, I think the latter is a better route because your tiles are done with a ton of single-pixel noise; if we really want awesome pixel artistry then they definitely need to be replaced with something more refined and less noisy. Pixel art is a bit of a misnomer as it ought to be more about art with pixel clusters created by similar colors touching each other, not single-pixel dot detailing. Pixel dots aren't great for detailing anyways.


As for the somberness, a quick looks outside tells me that grass is a much lighter color than what you have done for yours. the colors also seem to suggest some really dark weather as well. Why not go for sunnier weather, with much stronger contrast between lights and shadows, with a touch of hue shifting to suggest a warm light source and such? I find that the really dark grass just makes this graphical style feel a lot more depressing.

As far as I've figured game graphics, game graphics should be done in a style that complements the game play. Picture whatever game you happen to know with a cartoony art style. Imagine how that looks if it used a realistic 3D graphical style instead. I've made similar mistakes before. Game graphics shouldn't try to be real just for the sake of being real; realistic pixels go best with games that try to be real and serious. My ideal of a farm game - it should be all 'Hey, this is just a game. Chill out and have fun!.' A cartoony style ought to go well with that mood. I see realistic art styles to be more like "This is srs bsns bro. Step up your game". Maybe something for FPS games, but I have difficulty seeing that work out for a farm game.... unless by chance it's an educational game?

What I've been doing lately is look at examples of game graphics out there just to see what's possible. Have you thought about doing that? Sometimes it really helps to see how other artists approach things so you can learn something.