[WIP]Dawn on Hobbiton

[Siapran]

Hi all.
Recently, I've been working on some monochrome super-small sprites for a calculator game, and I've lost the hand of everything I had worked on in color.
So to go back into the bathtub, I've tried this: I gave myself 10 minutes to try to do something suitable.





As you can see, there is plenty of room for improvement. So if anyone could help me on the way, I'd be really grateful

Have a good day.

EDIT:

The more I work on this, the uglier it gets...



No, really, I've worked on this for about 4 hours and I can't get anything right. I fixed the lighting, but the grass looks flat, and the forest is simply terrible, I can't get the doors to look like doors, not to mention the windows and the walls...

Any advice would be hugely helpful.

[Siapran]

bump...

[snv]

No, really, I've worked on this for about 4 hours and I can't get anything right. I fixed the lighting, but the grass looks flat, and the forest is simply terrible, I can't get the doors to look like doors, not to mention the windows and the walls...

Any advice would be hugely helpful.

Try shading road bricks (just one more lighter color, at borders). You can probably almost directly coopy grass and road from this GBA game, which uses just a few colors:

[Siapran]

Thank you for the refference, it's really helpful!
I'll be back in a minute with some updated stuff.

Thank you again!

EDIT:


Added patches of grass, flowers, and random depth providers.
Added shade to pavement.
Fixed lighting (again).

Actually I'm having a really bad time shading that house on the left.

What should I do next?

[Blackhawk22]

Well I fixed the lighting on your hobbit holes. I changed quite a bit, but I believe the road could use a few more cracks, or weeds between the rocks. I added light on the windows to give them a cozy feeling. Try to stray from the dithering in the clouds, also I would fix up the clouds that I changed. Other than that, maybe you could make the grass more detailed.

[Siapran]

Wow that is gorgeous. Especially the grass.
I'll try sticking to mine and working with your edit in mind. Thank you for the help!

EDIT:

ok here's my progress so far, I'll work some more on it later (clouds and more detail on the grass).



Still not satisfied with the forest though. Any suggestions?

[Blackhawk22]

Thanks. I have one question though, you said you were making a calculator game. So why use a colored palette for the scene?

[Ashbad]

Thanks. I have one question though, you said you were making a calculator game. So why use a colored palette for the scene?

Welcome to the age of the Color-Display graphing calculator.

http://www.amazon.com/Prizm-FX-CG10-Color-Graphing-Calculator/dp/B00481K4KS
http://www.walmart.com/ip/TI-Nspire-CX-CAS-Handheld-Calculator/17164052
(No, I'm not a spambot.)

@OP, the Hobbit holes are advancing nicely, but I think you may want to play around with your colors a bit, specifically working to make the colors contrast more; I, for example, have a hard time discerning what those chimneys are against the grass, and what form they have.  You could also make the rock path fit in better if the hobbit holes cast some sort of shadow onto them, since the sun IS shining on them, after all.  Overall, nice improvement thus far.

[Siapran]

Hmm now that you mention it, I might want to alter my rock palette a bit.

Thanks. I have one question though, you said you were making a calculator game. So why use a colored palette for the scene?

Well. I might use this on my brand new FX-CG10, but this was originally for training purposes.
The problem is that I have been working A LOT with ridiculously hard color and dimension restrictions, because I'm basically working on a SSB-like game on our good ol' FX-9860 monochrome 128*64 displayed calculators (I may post these sprites when I'm finished with them btw, and I need some help with animation anyway so you'll see them soon enough).
The main issue was that I completely lost the hand on anything color related (I was doing readability above all work with the monochrome restrictions, and now I need to move on to something more artistic, considering the restrictions are changing with the full 32-bit depth of the FX-CG10 screen). I've got some time on my hands (for once) and I thought some training could do me no bad, so I had a go, and failed miserably, so basically I asked for a hand to help me back on my feet, and thank you to the three of you who helped me.

Well. The moment has passed. Back to work.

[Blackhawk22]

Color display calculators.. huh I guess I'm centuries behind with my TI-84..