I like this in general. Though I would like to see it 1:1. Also, the rocks (the whole island) are a little noisy.

I recently turned a corner in my 'traditional' media where I am ok with letting people see my 'hand' in the media. For a long time my goal was to obscure the medium to create a clearer and higher fidelity image, but I am moving away from that, mostly thanks to a more solid footing in 20th century art history.

All this is to say that one thing that I love about pixel art is the ways in which the images it creates are ambiguous - one of my favorite moments is when I zoom in to get a better look at a particular detail, only to realize it does not exist. I think that to focus on this or that technique is like arguing about the best kung-fu, and we know how Bruce felt about that.

It is true however that I am a hobbyist when it comes to this, and not a professional, or a purist. When it comes to jagginess, my only response is that if it is done in such a way that I as a viewer can recognize it unambiguously as a choice and not a mistake, then I accept it at face value (see Corporate Climber, for a recent example). I feel like intentionality is core to any technical discussion - how many times have you tried to critique someone only to have them blow it off with "I meant to do that." - in the words of Robert Anton Wilson: "Reality is what you can get away with. If you can't get away with it, it ain't real."

Sorry if this is too rambly. I would be glad to clarify or discuss further.

I saw this and it fairly blew my mind:


http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/11/designing_the_smallest_legible_scre.html
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/11/a_tiny_screen_font_you_can_actually.html

Image from their site so forgive the jpg.

I didn't have as much time to work on this as I would like; I hope this edit helps more than hurts. I know you said that you were going for anime, but, just for the record, anime does not (to me) necessarily mean minimalistic or simple, either. I tried to take it farther in rendering than you might, so I apologize. Also, I added 2 colors, mea culpa. If I had more time I would spend it on the sand, which is just sort of scribbled in, for now.

The main points I wanted to communicate were that a small amount of defining shapes and cleaning up outlines could go a long way. Also, especially because you want your style to be cartoon-y, your rocks should be so rocky that they are confrontational about it: "Yeah I'm a rock! Wanna make something of it!?" Your sand should be so sandy that from a block away people are like: "Oh sh- here comes sand again to stir up trouble..."

As it stands with your rendering, one would not be so sure what was what if a section of the picture was pulled out of context.

Three places I would recommend offhand for the kind of feel you are going for to study are The backgrounds for The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio (the underwater scenes, obv.) and Spongebob. All have different, but very effective ways of approaching this environment.

Anyway, not everything I did is perfect, so don't take it as gospel, but rather as a number of suggestions.

Let me know if you have any questions about what I did.

EDIT: Oh, also - I found working with your palette to be most enjoyable - good picks on the colors.

I may be wrong, but as it stands, this isn't really pixel-art to me because no attention has really been paid to the individual -pixel level during drawing. The curves are not smooth, everything is kinda blob-y (as if drawn with a 3px circle brush), and (most importantly) I think the piece suffers for this.

Fist, smooth out the curves, then consider AA for the curves to get rid of remaining jaggies, then consider adding some detail to differentiate sand from rock from cloud. Have to make dinner now, but may take a crack at a small edit later to illustrate my points.