My forest scenery!

[felipejoys]

Hi guys, I've been taking pixel art more seriously lately, and this is what I've come to produce:



My first entire tileset! I'm so proud of myself. I took some critiques and improved it a lot over time, but I wasn't in a community made around pixel art only.
The tiles, trees and backgrounds that you see are finished. I would still like to know what I could still improve, or things that I could add?

This is for a made-up 2D platform side scroller! There is no game, but it was made with one of these in mind! The scene itself was set up in Game Maker.

[YellowLime]

It seems to me that you aren't quite yet working on a pixel level. Only the ground and the closest trees resemble pixelart.

When doing pixelart, you have to consider the position of every individual line, you don't just use lines and fill with colors.
And, you absolutely can't use techniques you would use in other digital art, like the blurring on the background trees and the wolf.
(Tip: use a color that's either darker or less saturated for the background trees, so they don't clash with the foreground ones)

So, don't just use lines, and blobs of color fill. That's only half of the work.
Afterwards, you have to consider the light and texture, and modify the pixels accordingly, in an individual manner. It's a lot more work, but it's worth it!

[felipejoys]

Trees: fix attempt, LOVE the tip!
Low background: fix attempt, but missing right color and more details. WORKING ON THIS.
Wolf: it wasn't blurried... any more tips on him?

OP image updated! Thanks A LOT for this great feedback, YellowLime!

[YellowLime]

Well, if the wolf wasn't blurried, then the problem is the tool that you used to draw it, since it's obvious that the wolf has too many different colors that don't sum up into a cohesive shape.

You have to use a binary brush to do everything, just like in the trees and mountain. You seem to have used a tool more suited for freehand drawing when creating the wolf

A binary brush, in every "drawing" program, is a tool that only creates pixels of the exact same color when you apply it to the image. In most programs, it's symbolized as a pencil

[felipejoys]

No matter what I did, that tall grass just wouldn't fit in anymore, so I decided to scrap it entirely unless I get a new vision for it or something (I hope I do).

I did use the pencil for the wolf, I guess I just did the fur too randomly on shades. Fur is hard!

Thanks a lot for the critiques. On the rest of the elements, like trees, was there something I could have done better too?

Things I learnt so far: Too many shades are bad, blur is bad, saturation adjustments can make great background objects. These are all so important, thanks a bunch!