if it were up to me, i'd say you were being too faithful. the open and bland level designs are going to make this look amaturish even if you are totally badass about the tiles and characters themselves. Still, this shows a great improvement. I would AA/selout to a lighter gray, because you don't have to get that close to black just to fade into black, and it will help a ton with the blue. With your light characters, you may even experiment with a touch darker sky
about the black outline, think about simultaneous contrast.
look at this work by Mirre:
zoom in on the top of the minotaur's head and see just how light the line is there, and yet how dark it actually looks because it is bordered by two lighter colors.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2008, 05:04:52 pm by Adarias »
Logged
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.