[WIP] Horse with no name.

[Limes]

though there be no horse in the photo the picture is based of of the song horse with no name. Weirdly enough in the song the horse has little importance. The drawing is near finished thought I would post it here before finishing, get some more advice.

EDIT.

Just a notice, I am wondering if I am over pixelling the sky. Is the dither too much?


more work

[Decroded]

Very nice . Well done
Composition is similar to something I've been thinking of doing (as opposed to actually doing like usual ) though theme is different.

Anyway firstly its hard to tell what is happening in the background.
Its Indiana Jones coming out of the jungle to a desert? Or should he look more like a cowboy?



I felt the dark clouds of background compete with foreground so lightened it up a bit.
Its not that you're over-dithering but you could create some more variation in the opacity of the clouds by varying the edges more.
I did a tiny bit but didn't keep going especially as I don't know what those diagonal beams of light around about.

Some other take-it-or-leave-it ideas......
Maybe the horse is being set free?
Perhaps you could add an element of Native American culture?
Clouds could be overhead with beams of light shining through to suggest the rain has just stopped.

[Limes]

I wouldn't want to hint that the rain has stopped because the rain in the song actually follows him into the desert, he realizes the desert has just as much rain as the other place. In the song rain symbolizes problems and he feels cramped up where he lives so he sets out to escape his life to the desert a place where he feels has no problems but in reality " The desert is just a ocean bottom"

I unfortunately can't change the pallet because it isn't my pallet (I probably should have said that in the OP) It is Cure's pallet. I will do the fixes to the main guy and play around with the clouds and beams, the beams are just sunlight because the sun is setting.

To be in more detail this image shows the narrator of the song as he breaks free from the RAINforest to the desert which he thinks is problem free. There is foresight in the image as rain clouds are setting over the desert fore sighting that the desert has rain 'swell. I could have made the composition and symbolism more obvious. Maybe I will redo it in the future, for now thanks for your input .

(I assume you said something about native americans because of the cover art for the album. the native americans have less to do with the song and more with the band name.)

[Manupix]

I had no idea what this was when I first saw it, as I don't know the song. Both last posts clarified it a bit, but just in case it is important that the context is understood without knowing the song, it's not. This is a composition problem in a large sense: layout + visual priorities + intent.

The layout is pretty weird, I can't help feeling that it's a cropped part from a larger pic showing more of the bottom.
The guy's head is almost centered; the general symmetry makes it rather weak.

I only saw the desert because of the previous posts. At first I only saw sky, and even knowing that there is landscape, the contrast and style are so different between fg and bg that it's almost not there.
Also the light is totally not a sunset light: the desert should be much darker than the sky if the light came from the setting sun; and the foreground light source isn't obviously defined.

The pixeling is soooo different between fg and bg. Yes, there is over-pixeling and over-dithering in the sky, this is made worse because there is no dithering at all in the fg (not that there should be, I'd rather remove most of it in the bg but that's a matter of taste). Moreover, the pixeling is pretty solid in the center group but much more sloppy in the trees. Why outlines (almost) only in the center, for one thing?

Fg colors are nice, bg lacks something. Sunset reds? More saturation?

In short, this has potential, but you need to decide where you're going with it!

[Limes]

 

Took some crit. hopefully this will work better made some room on the bottom for more FG(or more BG how ever you look at it.

I thought it looked weird without outlines.

[r1k]

what if you had the sky showing the sun breaking out through storm clouds, like the storm just ended.  Quick edit cause I gotta go somewhere right now

[Limes]

WAaaow YES! I love that. Thank you sir!



Here is the more later version made this morn. I only do pixel art on week days so i'll see you guys on monday with update

Wait that is super turnips edit of the sky. (NO TIME GTG)

[Limes]

Now which way do we go? hmmmm.

[Decroded]

Why the glimmer of hope now?
I thought you said there was no escaping the rain.
Sounds more like you should add rain in the background scene with heavy desaturation and lowering of contrast.
And drips of rain from the leaves with some shinier wet surfaces seems appropriate?

[Limes]

It could possibly mean that the sun is disappearing behind the clouds rather then the other way around.

I tried making shiny leafs and stuff, having troubles any tips.