[WIP] Trying to do clouds at night..

[daikath]

Ive been trying to pixel some clouds at night, been having some troubles with it, it is for tiles in a video game for now.



Should I finish it in this method?

Been using this as inspiration link

The only example of clouds at night i could find were in Shinobi 3. But even then the background is quite bright.
 

[HughSpectrum]

I am terrible at drawing clouds, but I do tend to know that they're not very rectangular.  From what I understand their shapes are defined by air movement and how thick they are as a gas.

The only example of clouds at night i could find were in Shinobi 3. But even then the background is quite bright.

That's really more of a morning scene, and the dark clouds are dark because you're looking at the side of them that aren't being hit by the sun.

[The 7th Sin]

You might want to check out this tutorial, it's pretty helpful about how to draw pixel art clouds.
http://www.rapapaing.com/blog/?p=12

One quick thing I did notice about the clouds you made here is that, though they have significant highlights, they lack shadows.
Utilizing a few shadows might help give the clouds more form.

[piffany]

I was gonna say that's an awesome drawing, then read the post and realized it's not yours 

[EyeCraft]

The only example of clouds at night i could find were in Shinobi 3. But even then the background is quite bright.

Oh you have many more references available than that.

Few things to keep in mind with clouds:

- They are translucent. This means towards the edges of the form you start to get other tones and colours blending into them. This has numerous effects depending on the orientation of the lightsource. In cases where the cloud is somewhat between the viewer and the lightsource (in this case the moon), you get rims of lightness around the silhouette of the cloud. It also means you get much fewer hard edges, the form generally flows into itself very softly.
It also means as clouds get thinner/smaller, the tendency for light to completely pass through them increases, causing them to have a complete lack of shadow. If they are being hit by direct light, this will cause them to glow.
- They are in constant motion. This results in many tearing, stretching and compounding forms. The rectangular shape in your version is not typical.
- They are lit by reflected light from the surface of the planet. This, combined with the translucent nature of clouds, makes lighting them more complex. It depends upon how much light there is in the scene. In a modern setting, lightsources such as cities can light clouds up quite a bit. Reflected light of the moon on the ocean would probably give a bit of light onto the clouds as well, depending on how many clouds are in the sky to block the moon hitting the ocean.

Okay kind of rambling now.

Points are:
Your cloud needs to stretch/tear/compound on itself.
Too many hard edges
Shadow covers the entire underside of the form

Aside from that, it's grey. Try making it bluer, though I guess it depends on the scene you want to put the cloud in. What the light levels are, what the ambient light is like, how far away the cloud is from the viewer. These will determine the tinting of the cloud.

Study the references! 

[daikath]

Ok,, havent incorporated eyecrafts suggestions, but have two new versioms, first there is this one.



and then one based on the tutorial suggested by 7th sin.



Will try to incorporate's eyecrafts suggestions now.

[Decroded]

The problem is u r trying to render it like some opaque object instead of thinking of it as volumetric cloud of water vapour where its each particle that reflects the light.
Try roughing out a larger scene about the resolution of the game and block in the composition where the clouds and hills or tree line or whatever will go and don't worry about any details at that stage.
fill the clouds with the darkest cloud shade then start to detail around the edges to be brighter, because the thinner parts are more lit up by the moon shining through the cloud.
Obviously it should be brighter the closer to the moon and u can show the thickness of the cloud by how dark it is.
Then u can pick one part go and add puffs and detail, play with colours etc.

[daikath]

I dont know the artist, but I found this

Which honestly has just what I wasnt, in trying to copy it i made the following version.



I think its the best i can do in a short time so I'll leave it at this, I wanna thank everyone for their suggestions.