Ebook Cover: Crawl (WIP)

[A-Red]

Hey all,

I'm working on a cover image for my latest ebook short story. Very WIP right now, but I wanted to see if the basic concepts are working out so far. I'm also unsure of how to handle the larger flat surfaces--the walls, sill, and sash.  If anyone knows of tutorials or good examples of ways that people have drawn/textured those sorts of big blank spaces in pixel art, or has advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

[A-Red]

Update.  Any C&C is greatly appreciated--I'm still doing a lot of this by feel.

[NaCl]

I think you're having trouble with this because it's so big. Making pixel art large like this is definitely possible, but only when it uses a hyper-detailed style. All the strengths of pixel art are lost if you are not working on the level of the "pixel cluster" as Helm calls it.  Here you're just using lines and the bucket tool, then trying to add in textures. Not gonna work.

If you do want to make it big like this, consider doing it in another medium. Or, you need to totally change your mindset from lines to volumetric shapes. Personally I'd shrink it down a lot and then go from there.

[A-Red]

NaCl: Fair enough--All the best pixel art I've ever seen is about this size (and it's the size I need to work with for ebook covers), but I've got a ways to go before I'm on anywhere near the same level as this guy. I think this is coming along pretty well--I feel like I could actually use it--but it's taking far too long at this size to be viable.  Next time, I'll try a smaller image with some kind of border with extra space for the title/author name to make up for the size difference.

Anyway, here's what I've got at this point:

[tim]

It looks pretty solid and the line art is clean, however you should avoid putting too small details,
because it feels noisy instead of detailed, and you will lose the pixel art feel. If you take a look
example image you linked from Fool, a pixel art master, you will understand that the pixel art
feeling comes from small shapes carefully drawned by hand, and not pixel-sized noise to emulate
the rock texture.

Also, before detailing that much, you should think about the overall composition. No foreground
or human silhouette on the foreground ? What's in the background ? From where your light is coming.

The  biggest issue of your picture is the famous pillow shading. You shaded your shapes bright in the center
and darker near the strokes : It looks very flat and uninteresting. Try to make a choice with lighting. This is
like the "default mode" of any 3D software or like using a front flash for photography.