[wip] the ruins of Paris

[NaCl]

bricks actually do take on a dark greenish yellow hue when exposed to massive amounts of radiation

about 90% of the time my pants dont match the sidewalk, or the buildings around me

Never let reality interfere with your art. Your goal is to make it look good, not real. The sickly shade of green does not look good to me, and I think others may agree. I also have to agree with Lizzrd, the characters don't feel like they fit, color or style wise.

You don't need to make all the colors closer together, but you do need to find an overall combination of colors that look good. Your pants may not match the sidewalk but when you're walking around you're not trying to create an aesthetic. Saturated pinks next to desaturated green/yellows does not look good.

I think the main problem with the building is that each brick is way over shaded. It's distracting. You should instead perhaps suggest a brick texture, instead of drawing a load of bricks, all lit exactly the same.

Get your colors under control. There are 113 in the latest image you posted. I was going to make an edit but modifying colors under these conditions is impossible. As you add colors, keep an organized palette somewhere, so you can see if you need it or if you already have another color that can be used.

[zez]

Huh... there ARE 113 in that, hang on... that makes ZERO sense....
layer 1- 13 + alpha
layer 2 - 6 + alpha
railing - 4 + alpha (shares 2 with layer 1)
player - 10 + alpha
enemy - 5 + alpha
shots - 3 + alpha (times two I guess, because the enemy shots are all pallet swaps of the player shot)

// other stuff
temp foreground tiles seem to be at 17 colors + alpha, thats the one bit of sprite work that isnt me, and is actually for a totally different area...
there is another 1 color for the bg, and 1 more for the unfinished silhouette in the parallax layer (mostly just there so I could make sure parallax was working)
...

that should be 46 total in the assets being used (everything but the 17 in the foreground tile,) and 63 total.... That is also making the assumption I never reused colors, and that is flat out untrue.

That being said, I just noticed that I didnt crop out the windows vista screen boarder, and when I copied a small portion of that into a new image, got a solid 73 colors, time to crop.
... ok, new count is 43. Thats still slightly overkill, and I could probably do things about it like match the bullet colors to the player, but its not nearly as daunting...
Ill re-assess the hue on the bricks them self, but Im kind of curios on how to suggest a brick texture... My art has all the subtlety of a "sex crazed rhinoceros on bad acid", and as of such any pointers on doing that would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, umm.. heres the cropped image

[zez]

Pretty massive changes made to the pallet, and some changes to the enemy sprites. There are now female version of the bloodwolves (the blue guys, its kind of a joke,) and enemy's are given a gender randomly on creation. The bike in that screen is super WIP, btw. I still need to add in the engine block, and actually shade it, but thats the overall form blocked in.

Anyhow.... If anyone has any suggestions on how to fix the bricks in the tiles to look more textured and blend better with the rest of the game, that would be rad. Any other comments or suggestions are also more then welcome.

*EDIT* Ohyeah, Im also down to 16 colors counting alpha. That number will likely go up as I add in more enemys, as the different gangs all get there own gang colors, but yeah.

[Anarkhya]

how to fix the bricks in the tiles to look more textured and blend better with the rest of the game.

IMO, the Batman - Nes (1989) is a good reference for a dark/gloomy/gothic brick tiling with limited palette, 6 colors here (if gui and sprite removed).

[ErekT]

I like the bricks the way they are, if you try to add texture to bricks in that resolution I think it can get real noisy real quick. The new palette works good but the dark tones are too saturated maybe? Cooked up a little edit to illustrate:



I also allowed myself to add in a line at the left house's beam to make it stand out some more.

[zez]

Word, that does look a whole lot better.
I was using the same darkest color I used on the player (mostly around the boots) so it was a fair bit more saturated, yours definitely looks better, and manages to work fine as the darkest color on the player as well (ends up upping the contrast a tiny bit and actually makes him pop more, well making some details more noticeable.)
The batman bricks are friggin gorgeous, but I think that much dithering would be to distracting, given that the game will be double sized. I bet that looks amazing on a crt tho.
I also may steal the idea of having lighter 'pillars' that are made of larger bricks to show some illusion of depth, as that looks really good, and totally shows up in french architecture.
The line on the pillar on the left hand one looks pretty good, and does a good job of making it look rounder and pop from the rest of the building a little bit, unfortunately it doesnt work on the one on the right, and as of such the rightmost one looks flat in comparison. You have however inspired me to try and shade the pillar better, so there should be another version of this soon.