Sunset Ocean

[AnnIshman]

I did some quick box dithering to get a feel for bringing down the harshness of some of the colors and contact points. I think this helps in some ways and hurts in others. It comes across more as dawn than dusk to me now so I may bring in more of the orange to bring back some of the vividness of the sky.

I hope I do not come across as hard headed or dismissive. I appreciate all the comments and advice.

st0ven
I think you're dead on about the purple and blue being very harsh when next to each other in large chunks. If I am going to make this funky palette work I will be more mindful of that. Your comment of pushing the square nature of the pixel intrigues me, and I'd appreciate if you could go on a bit more about that as I am not sure I fully understand.

Mathias
It is interesting that I find this much blue in your edit to be too harsh for me, but in my original I find the orange sky and purple water not nearly as disturbing. I followed your lead of dropping the waves outside of the sunlight in my edit. Not because I want to remove them entirely. I think they distract from the numerous other issues I'd like to focus on first.

StaticSails
I find the reaction to these colors interesting. Don't get me wrong, I can see what everyone is saying and where their complaints are coming from, I suppose I have not given up yet on my original intentions of trying to make them work. I take into account that there is a lot of experience here working with limited colors and people have a good feel for when combinations do not work. I feel compelled for my own understanding to keep at it and if in the end concede that I cannot make them work together I hope that it is because I explored all my options and learned a thing or two.

[AnnIshman]

Reverted all the way back. Dithered and deleted for hours. Have arrived here.

[pistachio]

[snip]

I did some quick box dithering to get a feel for bringing down the harshness of some of the colors and contact points. I think this helps in some ways and hurts in others. It comes across more as dawn than dusk to me now so I may bring in more of the orange to bring back some of the vividness of the sky.

Honestly I have to say this one is somehow the easiest on my eyes and with a bit of smoothing up the dithering, perhaps adding some detail here and there, it'd be quite closer to finished. But the latest update almost seems somehow worse than what you started with. How do I explain: the two colors clash with eachother a great deal, and the level of detail and most of the dithering is so small you have to squint to see it. I think this is because it's being used on such a large scale, yet you're still using it as if the piece is smaller. So I see no use in it, really. All it does is make what's supposed to be the sea look more like some sort of very rough fabric or the static you see on old televisions, just blue-r. And I've never seen the sun glow so brightly, which is why I believe you should bring back the clouds and make the sky get darker gradually as it moves away from the sun, but more of a radial gradient.

Actually, come to think of it, at a size like this I'd listen to st0ven--unless you make use of the "pixel" aspect this would be much better off as a vector piece. But for the pixel aspect thing, I think you could do by scaling down the image a bit, in my mind (but that's just me).

One last thing; did you ever consider bringing up references? I think they'll help you greatly in determining how to properly shade and depict things and which direction you want to take it in, and how stylized you want to be. Here's one... And here's another but the first one was better.

[Mathias]

But your dither just creates purple. Why not just use purple then? It doesn't look like water with all the grain.

[skamocore]

I don't have too much of an issue with the garish false-colour stuff; It can work if that's what you're going for. Where did you get the colours from BTW? Did you pick them or was it some pre-defined palette from somewhere else?

Anyway, I think the main thing you should do before you continue any further is reducing the size of the piece drastically. Working at about 1/4 of this size would be good. That way you'll really be able to pay attention to the pixel details instead of doing that copy-paste dither thing that you had going in the previous version.

[AnnIshman]

Sorry for the minimal explanation with the latest image. Brain is sludge tired. It is far from done. The sky is a flat color because I removed everything in the image and focused on the water first. I have not abandoned the dithering idea yet. I agree the water has a noisy, grainy feel to it that I plan to work out more. Overall I am much happier with it than the stylized waves. I messed with the wave swirls for hours and hours and never could get them to feel right. Maybe it is the colors. Maybe I am a terrible artists. Probably both.

I have considered dropping the resolution. I am not ready to give up quite yet. I'd like to explore the grainy thing a bit more before I do.

To maybe clarify some misconceptions, if anyone feels like doing color value, res, or any other edits, please very much do so. Just because I am slamming my head against the wall trying to make these colors work does not mean I'll turn a blind eye to other edits outside of my little rules. Explanations of why adding a tiny hint of blue to a color and how it will rock my world would be amazingly helpful. My goal here is to learn more about colors and using them effectively, not creating an awesome sunset scene. Who seriously draws sunset scenes?

pistachio
I find it interesting that you find the sun too bright when in the images you've linked for reference the sun is close to white in both of them. Unless you meant the sky? Which again is basically untouched at this point.

skamocore
I got the colors out of a color index book for designers. I personally like the colors in combination, but I can completely understand why people would feel they are ugly. I also agree that I have used them in ugly ways in this very thread.

[pistachio]

pistachio
I find it interesting that you find the sun too bright when in the images you've linked for reference the sun is close to white in both of them. Unless you meant the sky? Which again is basically untouched at this point.

Yup, I meant the sky. You'd think the sun was going supernova rather than setting.

[AnnIshman]

More edits. I don't like the sky as is. I plan to edit it more to make it looks less cartoony. Water looks less like white noise, but still needs some work. I like where this is headed. I am not sure how much more time I will put into this before I move on to either lower res, color messing, or something else entirely.

Thanks again for all the help up to this point.

(Side note: my host seems to be dying randomly. I'll go a few hours without being able to see my stuff or upload anything. Anyone else get this or just me? I'll bug them about it, just curious if it is just me. Edit: Thanks, ptoing. Support email sent with stern words of the importance of my very lucrative site. I am sure dozens of engineers are working late into the night to figure it out.)

[schmohawk]

Don't take out the clouds. They look great.

[Demian]

You started with nice clouds and sucky water, now it seems to be the opposite, i really like how you made it look like water . Why don't you add your original clouds to this last version?