Ooooh, those are clouds and that in the middle is a zeppelin? It all makes sense now, but boy is it hard to convey that.

I tried and... Well, wasn't that successful. I think maybe they will always end up looking like either trees or rock formations or clouds.



Played around with the robe as well, pulling it a bit to the left and added some waves to try and convey the sense of the wind blowing. It's still a bit (too?) stiff on the right, though...

As for the zeppelin, I think it could have a bit of, or a more pronounced fin.

Ohhhhh, I thought that was some kind of poisonous fog! But now that you mention those are clouds I even see a zeppelin that I missed before!

- You are 100% right about that far highlights, there's no way they could exist, my bad.

- You did a great job with the clouds that I misread as dense, poisonous clouds, thing is, I do suck doing clouds, that's why they look like mountains 

- I think your character looks great with the details, to be honest the main and maybe only reason why I took so many details out of your character is because I suck at drawing folds and drapery. Merging shapes is just a resource that I find interesting because it makes the spectator complete shapes in it's head and as a bonus it's a good justification for my laziness.

- Disclaimer, this is a non paid promotion and no one is pointing a gun at my head I swear, anyway, I would highly recommend aseprite for pixelart, is cheap, is great, has animation features and looks like a software made for a 3 year old (So everything is easy to learn)

- Keep the great work and hopefully lets keep this forum alive.

@fskn: Thanks so much for taking the time to edit and for the words of encouragement. After a five year hiatus, I'm hoping to be more active in the PA community.
- You definitely made the lantern brighter than I had intended but I think somewhere in between is ideal, so I am working towards that. Thanks for giving me a better idea of where the light would hit.
- In regards to the robe, I just have to admit that I am handicapped by not really doing any real practice on drawing / painting cloth. I want it to be rippling a bit in the wind (notice the direction of the grass), but my brain simply shuts down when I try to model the physics in my mind. Ultimately, I just need to imitate references for hours until I get a 'feel' for how fabrics work. But for now, I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
- Good idea about the moonlight on the edge.
- Your trunk looks a bit flat, perhaps, but I think you nailed the texture. I will try to emulate this while trying to find a way to make the trunk look like a cylinder.

@eliddell: Thanks for the feedback!
- The figure is supposed to be wearing a mask. Ideally something like a venetian mask (without a mouth) but I'm struggling to make it readable without making it comical / cartoonish.
- Thanks for your comment about the middle. It was indeed supposed to be cloud.
- I'll need to think about the most distant buildings blending into the sky. I don't really have good intuition when it comes to atmospheric effect at night. Adding a highlight doesn't make sense to me, because then the building is brighter than the background and has more contrast than buildings that are closer instead of having less contrast and blending more into the background sky. This feels wrong. Of course, there may be other issues I'm not considering.



EDIT: Now SeinRuhe has gone and posted another great edit while I typed this and so I have to reconsider everything, including my life. Fack. To be continued.

EDIT2: Here we go.



@SeinRuhe: Thanks so much for taking the time to help out with an edit and thanks for the compliments!
- Unfortunately, my idea was to show a fictional setting of a medieval city above the clouds. So while I love your idea of making the character stand out, I'm not sure how to do this while still getting across that the plains are made of clouds. On the other hand, I may have already failed, since nobody seems to read them as clouds anyway! 
- While you suggested I should merge shapes on the right side of the character, I've gone ahead and added more shapes to make the character more interesting. Now I feel dumb and very conflicted, because I like your design.
- Interesting point about harsh speculars on the robe. I was trying to use the highlights to make the character stand out more, but I guess I went over the edge and made it kinky. I will play around with this. Wait, that sounded wrong. 
- Great advice to check my values. This is one of the disadvantages of being stuck in the 90's and pixelling with MS Paint. But I'll do that in the future!

Yeah, thing's have been so quiet that is sad to see...

Don't take my word like true when it comes to advice this piece since you seem way more well versed than me in this kind of pieces.

Before saying what I would do I want to take a little time to say this piece is quite sick, I wish I could have this kind of ideas.

Anyway here's what I would do:

- Make the character the focal point of this piece by softening the contrast and details on the background

- Merge some shapes of the character, specially on the hand that carries the lantern since it's the one that has more contrast, this to make it look sort of dramatic

- Get rid of the harsh speculars on the robe, make it looks like leather wich makes me think of kinky stuff instead of something dramatic.

- The town part looks beyond perfect please don't touch it

- Lastly, always check your values by making the piece black and white (this can be achieved by putting a new layer on top, fill it with white and put the layer blending mode on color) this helps to spot errors like crazy

Here's a quick edit I did, sorry for butchering your piece.