Here's the small edit...

Finally remembered to fix this. I think I'm relatively happy with it now. Thanks a lot for inspiration.

Let's do this, I'm in!

Do like:
- Mad Max/Borderlands style postapocalypse
- lo-fi/80s/old-school/dirty sci-fi
- space opera adventures and ancient races (Edmond Hamilton, Metroid, Halo, Mass Effect, Starcraft)
- lovecraftian fiction
- absolute nonsense 200%-over-the-top stupidly AWESOME movies (Six String Samurai, Scott Pilgrim, Manborg, Kung Fury, Turbo Kid, Bounty Killer, Iron Sky etc.)
- nosense over-the-top warrior chicks with stupidly big guns (just check Heavy Metal magazine covers)
- electro-industrial and metal music
- epic landscapes & backgrounds
- vibrant colors
- polished clean pixels without useless noise


Do not like:
- "modern" pixel art (lot's of greys and desturated colors, noisy, blocky, stickman figures, sloppy lines)
- oekaki
- history
- politics
- realism

This is a piece I made some time ago, a tribute to the The Darkness (Starbreeze game). It has the most sad ending I've ever seen in games, makes me cry every time. I'm relatively happy with it, but color palette is definitely a mess. I mostly picked colors from my ref and the scene looks pretty dull.



Here's the reference:
Spoiler

I'd like to ask for some help about coloring of this piece. How can I make this more pleasant for the eyes as a pixel scene while maintaining feel and atmosphere of the moment? I also dislike my dithering on the sky but haven't found a way to make a decent gradient there.

It's really hard for my eyes currently. Maybe you could add up some flora? Or otherwise tune down contrast a bit.

I like ur background rocks theyre nice except the consistent single row of dithering looks weird.
front rocks remind me of henk neiborg which is good but ur probably aware the darker section has resulted in a bunch of loose cubes.
also rocks up front don't meld with background.

I'm mainly concerned with the rocks lol since its something i've been working on too (wish I had time to work on it!).

It all started with Henk Nieborg rock study for Pixel dailies on twitter. Most people liked it, and then I thought I could make a Mad Max mockup from it, because Mad Max is like the perfect movie for me. Then it all rolled from there.



I agree that dithering looks weird in some places. Maybe I should make another pass and get rid of it. Wasted so much time already on those bg rocks.

Black stuff up fornt is intended to be junk like barrels, tires and what not. But I didn't have time to add details yet. Not sure about lightning either, or what do you mean about "melding with background".


I've seen your rocky mockup, it just looks gorgeous. I can't match anything like that in quality yet.