Sunset Ocean

[AnnIshman]

I understand this is borderline pixel art. I assure you much time has been spent zoomed 10000% fiddling pixels. The purpose of this is an exercise in color and working with limited palettes. I think that part is a success although I admit I went for the easiest scene working with these four colors.

Some things in particular I'd like to get some crit on is there are many places in the wave-swirl-bulbs that the line weight and pixel clumps looks a bit meh. After lots of pixel pushing I gave some AA a go but with this palette I could not make it work. I have a love/hate relationship with the wave-bulbs themselves. Sometimes it feels like they work and sometimes it feels like a bunch of line swirls that don't represent waves at all.

The clouds and sky I am happy with, but any comments are welcome.

[pistachio]

The first thing I noticed was the pallette and how it was so high in contrast...

I really need to give my eyes a rest before I go on with crits, it's a bit too much for me. Maybe more than a bit.

[AnnIshman]

The color choices could probably do with some explanation. The exercise was about using a limited set of colors and not so much about choosing said colors so I did a very scientific process of opening a color index book to a random page and choosing a color set. I wanted to go a different route from using the more common palettes from hardware of yonder age.

The point being the colors are locked, now what can you do with them? Color tweak suggestions are welcome if deemed necessary, but it is not really what I was focusing on accomplishing. Thanks!

[adamisgr8]

You might have been able to add a stray yelloe on the left and right of the main yellowy area in the sea. But I think that it is a great achievement

Off topic, is there an introductory thread?

[AnnIshman]

Many edits all over the place. I tried to address a number of things including clutter, lack of wave layering, overall sloppiness with the depth, simplifying, on and on. There are a few more spots I'd like to carve into however it is late here and I am exhausted. I think it is moving in the right direction.

[st0ven]

this piece would benefit greatly from being a vector piece. Not to say that just because its big, but because the individual pixels serve no value to the imagery, quite the opposite, the rigid intersects of color are quite glaring, making it feel rudimentary and unrefined.

The subject matter isnt amazingly exciting either. I think that 'pretty things' like sunsets and rainbows truly do attract a lot of people to draw, but the only semi interesting thing about it to me is the clouds. Sun is dead center of the screen, the horizon is almost dead center of the screen, it makes for a very simple composition that wont hold or attract your viewers attention at all.

one last issue i have with your bold yellow choice for the sky, while its quite striking, ive never seen a sunset make the sky THAT bright, and without any gradation into any cooler colors it makes the sky look very hot/alien (like a sea of lava on mercury perhaps).

I recommend trying to get a trial copy of flash or some free vector painting programs available and try recreating this piece using those tools i think youll find the final imagery much more appealing while still utilizing very few solid colors to illustrate your scenery.

[AnnIshman]

I agree with your points about the composition. I went with what is the most obvious here which ultimately comes out simple and boring. This is primarily for the learning and secondary for the aesthetics.

I am familiar with vector art applications and while I appreciate the suggestion, I respectfully disagree with there being no value to the individual pixels here. My favorite parts of the image are the tiny splotches of sharp pixels streaming from the clouds and the starkness in many areas that ultra fine vectors would destroy. I do agree that some areas would benefit from being vector, I suppose my question would be what suggestions do you have to pull these places more into being interesting pixel art as opposed to giving in to going vector with it? I understand I am simplifying something complex into a slider, but any thoughts would be nice to hear.

I have considered doing a dither fade with the sky and the ocean, as well as dither in a number of other spots. This feels a bit like cheating since I would be using the dither more to try to increase my color count, circumventing my original purpose of trying to make four colors work.  I think at this point it might be necessary because beyond further refining the waves I can't think of anything more to do to improve it, and it is in need of improving.

[st0ven]

I agree with your points about the composition. I went with what is the most obvious here which ultimately comes out simple and boring. This is primarily for the learning and secondary for the aesthetics.

I am familiar with vector art applications and while I appreciate the suggestion, I respectfully disagree with there being no value to the individual pixels here. My favorite parts of the image are the tiny splotches of sharp pixels streaming from the clouds and the starkness in many areas that ultra fine vectors would destroy. I do agree that some areas would benefit from being vector, I suppose my question would be what suggestions do you have to pull these places more into being interesting pixel art as opposed to giving in to going vector with it? I understand I am simplifying something complex into a slider, but any thoughts would be nice to hear.

I have considered doing a dither fade with the sky and the ocean, as well as dither in a number of other spots. This feels a bit like cheating since I would be using the dither more to try to increase my color count, circumventing my original purpose of trying to make four colors work.  I think at this point it might be necessary because beyond further refining the waves I can't think of anything more to do to improve it, and it is in need of improving.

I am observing your piece and i dont really see any aspect about it that is truly pixel relevant. you may enjoy the sharpness you would get from the edges of two colors meeting without any AA but that doesnt mean it is a technique of pixel art. Something that just looks 'pixelly' isnt always aesthetically pleasing.

If you focus your sight on the magenta engulfing one of your sections of blue, you can get a hint of a halo effect around the blue hitting that amazingly saturated magenta and that has a blurring effect anyway. (if this is just me and my eyesight someone definitely let me know). If there were pixel techniques used here im not sure theyd even look that sharp as a result.

If you wanted to make it pixel relevant, really push the square nature of the pixel in your expression of shapes found in the piece. Otherwise exploring the organic nature of the forms involved with limited color representation is probably better left to other higher res solutions, namely vector.

[Mathias]

Couldn't agree with steve more. And with vector, AA isn't mandatory. Just turn it off. By doing this in vector instead you could easily drag around points and vector shapes. Would be worlds easier. But, obviously you're dead-set on using only pixel methods for this. To each his own.

More focused on what you got here - your shapes are all over the place. If you're going to go such a "representational" route, why not attempt better more traditionally symbolic shapes. Change those random noodley wave crests to shapes easier to recognize as flowing water/waves.

Gotta be honest, hate the palette. It's the only thing I notice. I get caught up in it. If you were using funky stylized shapes or maybe more 80's-esque motifs it could make sense, but . . .

Felt like a fast edit swapping existing colors around, no shape edits, kept your palette since I know you aren't changing it.

[StaticSails]

A while ago on this board there was a huge discussion about color and palette creation. Some people said how they made palettes and others examined palettes people had been using. Along the way someone said that a color was ugly, the discussion halted. Some people defended the color. It wasn't the colors fault it didn't work well in the palette. On it's own it was a nice color, with the right colors it'd be beautiful.
Someone (may have been ptoing!) said "There are no ugly colors, just ugly combinations of color."

So I'm saying these are nice colors individually. Together they just don't work, they've got a bit of eye-burning in them. Since you're too stubborn to change them I suggest you pick a better combination of colors for future projects. Also, try to work a bit smaller to get a bit more from the medium.

Though you like the sharpness, it becomes overwhelming. Everything has that sharpness. In Arne's art tut he briefly goes over focus points. I suggest reading it over before wasting spending time on another project.
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm#focus_points

Mathias' edit is surprisingly easier to read. You can actually see the sun. St0ven and Mathias both have great points, read those both until they sink in.