Looking for some help with planning an ocean color palette

[Rob0Tix]

I am starting to plan a ocean scene, that will be for a small 2D level. Basically you can scroll left and right like in most platformers.

The view will be over the horizon, and for this particular level if you scroll far enough right, you would see an island.

I just wanted to describe that, so you have an idea of what I am trying to plan, but my main question is about color and intensity.

To begin, I slapped some bright blue colors on the screen, where it's darker blue in 2 shades under the horizon and light blue above the horizon for the sky. The reason I am not posting an image, is because it's just a quick flood fill without any considerations.

I have absolutely no idea, how to select the colors to make it comfortable for the viewer. I know that after looking at it for a while, it becomes irritating in contrast.

So my main question is this. If I want the player to be able to pan left and right while there are some moving objects in the screen, what steps should I take for creating the palette.

I need both a daytime and nighttime color palette for the same scene. It has to be comfortable for the viewer and in some instances, I might have a lot of things happening on the screen. The game will be setup like most platformers, but it's not a left to right beat the boss type of game.

Can you recommend some palette selection examples? Also, if you can explain how I would go about doing that myself, it would be very helpful. I have seen some great palettes like Dawnbringers palettes, but I actually would like to figure out a technique so I can customize it. There is no color limitation, but I do know I would like to stay within 256 colors. That seems to be a great standard for very detailed pixel art.

[Mathias]

256 colors huh?


Alright . . . look, if this is really something you're wanting to do, you need to stop over-thinking it and just get in there and do it.
You write like you're NASA spending 6 months preparing for a moon launch. Forget all the superfluous planning, open up your favorite image editor and get dirty, son.
GIT DIRTY, FIRE THE ROCKET goddangit

If you're new to art, to creating visual art, this may come as an unfortunate surprise, but: your first efforts will look like garbage.
Your first efforts WILL be failures. "Failures" in that the end-result you're left with, once done trying to save your work from looking mediocre at best, isn't what you were trying to make. But at least you tried, and you got that little bit of experience out of it.
Empirical.
Artistic growth is extremely empirical. Every good artist you appreciate only got good because they obsessively spent countless hours practicing and improving. All their first pieces are complete trash. I assure you.


So what you have to do is . . . do.

If you want help here with a project, post your WIP so readers have something to latch onto and comment on.

[Magpie]

What Mathias said, basically. Get something down, anything, and then we can start giving some feedback.