(WIP) Newbie Trying To Pixel An Island

[Decroded]

@wanyo nice edit 

@wallie998 Your not going to find rocks that stick up from the ground then have a waterfall coming off them.
what I suggest is stop drawing the detail for now and lets block in the contours of the land first and rough colour of where the water cliffs and trees are.
I feel like attempting an edit because Ive never done this but no time right now.
What im thinking would make sense is that this petal broke off from the main land. Theres a volcano (can be dormant an overgrown if u want) in the centre with ridges running out, then they were snapped off by some event.
Now u have cliffs on the mainland side, and on the petal side tthat would be the high area with a forest and some small peak popping out the top.
water flows from there through trees to a cliff where the land suddenly drops off and there is ur waterfall with pool and caves there. Surrounding this is more trees and coming from there is only one river following the contour of the land and out to the sea rather than making several random blue lines.
Is the island populated? If so, by whom? What is the theme of the world?

[Wallie988]

@decroded
Thanks!
I'll have to think about that, because I'm trying to tweak things to make them right. However, I do like the idea of the mountain and then the drop off theme...
 
Is there any other way to do the water than by using a mountain? The island is supposed to be a bit on the smaller side, so the river could be a little stream... >^.^<

[Decroded]

This is along the lines of what I was imagining without using any reference (except being based on Wanyo's edit).

Tried to add some naturalistic variations of the island shape in response to contours of the land.
The main ridge is probably a bit TOO prominent and should perhaps taper off more at the end (adding more forest would probably take care of this anyway).
Still don't know where all the water for the waterfall is coming from but lets pretend there's a natural spring there 
No idea how to add forest on these slopes without losing the shape.
Perhaps by adding a series of cliffs or something I dunno.


You don't have to go for this style though.
You might like to go for something more representational as Wanyo suggests which would be simpler as you don't need to put in as much thought and sculpt the land like this.
And it can still look fine to do that.

[Wallie988]

@Decroded
That's really awesome! I'm probably going to go with the slope and cave idea, but I'll try to push the slopes towards the back and squeeze in the trees around the cliff. :3

Also, how is everyone drawing these so fast? It takes me an hour just to do a tree... O.o

[Wanyo]

@Decroded shaping the land like that was totally where I was going next with that! (I may have run out of free time at work) Let's just pretend that the water is coming from a magical underground source pumped up through the island by some sort of giant beast. 

@Wallie I like the garden of the gods mountain idea, you can definitely find some awesome shapes out of those sort of mountains. If you're working off the ones you currently have use your reference and cut some hard edges and more points out. Don't worry about it taking you quite a bit of time, it does for all of us but the more you do it the faster you get. Also stick around here and you learn tricks to creating wholesale shapes before trying to tackle huge detailed things and you start thinking a bit differently about how to pull everything together. I've (<3 Decroded) learned so much and I feel like I keep getting better at this as will you! Just keep at it, don't get discouraged by everyone's work, speed, and talent then you'll get better with every piece!

[Wallie988]

@Wanyo Okay! Thanks! I'll try to figure something out with the leaf shaping (that was just too cool). :3
Now to figure out how to shrink the slopes...

[Decroded]

@Decroded
how is everyone drawing these so fast?

As Wanyo says, the more you do stuff the better you'll get.
Just keep pushing.
Try some different stuff too like some sprites.

It took me a while to do that since I never really tried properly.
Don't tell me boss I was doing it (like most of my edits )
Here's a progress in case your wondering the steps I took.
I think I'll follow the same steps next time I do something like this too.

[Wallie988]

@decroded
Wow, that helps a lot! *working on it* >^.^<

[Wallie988]

@decroded and @wanyo

How about this?:



It's pretty much still a rough sketch, but I wanted to correct shaping issues first... what do you all think? >^.^<

[Decroded]

You gotta paint over the paper background with water its really distracking 

Very similar layout but if you like it then why not.
Not sure what advice to give just keep going and if you get problems then try blocking in the most basic planes of light and shadow, work with a couple more shades of green including a subtle highlight along the ridge (don't use that colour on the sides of the ridge), and make sure this basic form reads correctly before sculpting it further with detail.


If you don't want to be realistic, you could instead rough in a bunch of cylndrical rock platforms/cliff things of different heights and sizes overlapping each other and add a waterfall cascading down the structure.
I'm probably overthinking by worrying about where the water is coming from when it could just be a natural spring at the top of the rocks.