Underwater rock tiles [C+C]

[Nirel]

hi
I believe I finished these 
I changed the palette again, I'd like to know what you think about it and the work in general.
Tilesheet:Spoiler

(need to finish more tiles), needs a little cleaning around the joints
Spoiler

I felt I had to add a couple of dark tones so it's now 14 total. I was really hoping I could get some crits before I add these walls to the rest of the tiles.
Spoiler

might work better with a lighter background.

So I couldn't make anything work in this perspective so back to the rocks
I sketched perspective, I want to add a little color and detail (but not much) tile it and clean it up.
Spoiler

I've tiled it in a way it could look in-game (there's supposed to be a menu at the side)
Spoiler

I think I finished all the tiles, please tell me if you think of a way I could make this better.
Spoiler

Tiles
Spoiler

Update: I got increasingly annoyed with the blurriness and pillow shading, I started adding highlights here and there ,this is what I ended up with lol, please tell me what you think so far.
Spoiler

Edit: new palette thanks to ptoing's Photoshop advice.
Spoiler

I'm trying to make something like those vertical scrolling spaceship shooters only underwater, these are supposed to be the walls (top view). I thought I might post this here to get some insight before continuing with the diagonal tiles and maybe more edge tiles.
It supposed to be at 300%
Spoiler

I also tried playing with the palette a bit, for some reason the colors are different from Photoshop, and I don't know why.
Spoiler

[Johasu]

Saving an image in .gif form can often compress the colors (256 total I believe).

My biggest thought is that for a pile of rocks it is very symmetric and square edged.  If you have to stick to a squared tile set like this it might benefit the work to have a bit more random edging on the border tiles to make it feel less intentionally placed.  What you have sort of gives the appearance of a box of stones looked at from above.  Perhaps give the border tiles a bit deeper shading to make it seem like they are descending more?

[Nirel]

Saving an image in .gif form can often compress the colors (256 total I believe).

My biggest thought is that for a pile of rocks it is very symmetric and square edged.  If you have to stick to a squared tile set like this it might benefit the work to have a bit more random edging on the border tiles to make it feel less intentionally placed.  What you have sort of gives the appearance of a box of stones looked at from above.  Perhaps give the border tiles a bit deeper shading to make it seem like they are descending more?

It is a gif and the tiles are only 12 colors(excluding transparency ), you can see the palette at the left of both of the bigger pictures. There are only square edges because I haven't done the diagonals yet, the straight edges are sort of a functionality to the game but I might change that. I'll try to play with the shading and see if it looks better, when I first tried making the edges I think they looked a bit more natural -

But when I compressed and tiled the edges they ended up different.

[Daimoth]

Wow, it almost looks photographic.

[ptoing]

About the colour issues. In Photoshop go to Edit > Color Settings and set it to Monitor Color. And you can also check Edit > Assign Profile and make sure that the file is not colour managed. Hope that helps.

[Nirel]

About the colour issues. In Photoshop go to Edit > Color Settings and set it to Monitor Color. And you can also check Edit > Assign Profile and make sure that the file is not colour managed. Hope that helps.

Thanks, I'll make sure to check this out, you really saved me.

Wow, it almost looks photographic.

Thanks! I worked many hours on this, when I started out it looked like this -

It was like an AAing study   I think Johasu has a point though, it does look boxish. I'm thinking of remaking the tiles and maybe using these for the menus.

[Gil]

I don't believe you that it's not photographic/reduced actually, but whatever. You seem to have pixel level control on these, so good on you.

[ptoing]

Why would you think that Gil? It's not like this is hard to do at all. Bunch of circular shapes with agressive AA and some thought about layering.
Looks a bit blurry, but quite effective for what it is.

[Nirel]

I don't believe you that it's not photographic/reduced actually, but whatever. You seem to have pixel level control on these, so good on you.

I guess I should take that as a compliment .It took me a lot of time to make it tile this way, if it was a reduced picture there is no way it would tile this way, you can play with the tiles if you want. This was my reference at first in case you were wondering.
Spoiler

and if you try to reduce this picture it turns out much less blurry, I acually tried to make my tiles more crisp but it looked jaggy, you can also see a few of my Wips in comments I made before.
this is my first attempt at making tiles by the way, from the green-purple one to this, it took me about a month (I have other obligations so I didn't do it all the time obviousely).

[LD]

I actually prefer the style of your "when I started out it looked like this" (although it obviously needs some work, especially in coloring), it looks more like pixel art, and less like a scaled down image (even if the newer version isn't, it still has that sort of feel). Here's a quick edit of some rock tiles I sketched up a while ago. They are a bit lower res than yours, and I only spent about fifteen minutes on them, but i think they have a more artsy feel.



I guess it's all really a matter of preference though, and really I'm FAR from being an expert on pixel art.