Guys, please help with ratio of colors! (platformer mockup)

[winged doom]

I've been painted this picture so far that now can't understand I like it or not.



But it seems that the ratio of colors is bad and this picture causes irritation for some reason. I guess the problem with a yellow, orange or red shades. They not work with blue and green now.  So, without character it (with orange and yellows colors) looks more cool:



Anyway I don't know how to fix it, have tryed adjust colors in photoshop:



But it's still crap. I would appreciate any help or advices, or just tell me is that ok or bad?

[Neirda]

Hi Winged Doom, I've done a quick overpaint of your scene before lunch:



* Platformers need good readability of the path characters may take, and colliders must be more obvious, try to bring attention with brightest colors on playable area first  , avoid putting them in useless part of the screen gameplaywise.

* The saturation & contrast were too high, you can test differents quick compositing with Ctrl+B ( for colors ) & Ctrl+M ( for Contrast ) in photoshop, I've added some red in brightest tones, and green darkest one for exemple, which smooth up the whole scene.

[winged doom]

Hi! I like what you did with a large green spot in the center. Now I see that this was a problematic a place, so I will try to develop your idea. But I'm not sure about saturation & contrast and I like my color solution more than yours. This version maybe is a bit high



...but this version is okey i think:



(If we talk about saturation & contrast of course).

Anyway, thank you for help, now I will try to saturate the details in central green spot and make it in some places darker, like on your edit. On your edit it gives the impression that near is placed something big from which falls shadow on rock with character. And I definitely like it.


UPDATE: Allright, I have new version and I like colors:



What do you think, guys, it's better?

[dpixel]

I think the problem is that the character has the same palette as the background.  I had to zoom in to tell it was a character.

[winged doom]

I think the problem is that the character has the same palette as the background.

I can't agree with this. A large part of the character is painted orange and crimson. Orange is not used anywhere else in the picture and crimson almost too. Also, character placed on a dark background. So I'm not see any problem here.

I had to zoom in to tell it was a character.

I must say that painted this with the expectation that it will be allways scaled. So it is right that you zoomed in. 

So, new version:



And I like it as well as last picture from my previous post (http://i.imgur.com/bP31Yp0.png). Now I see that problem was in red spots on stones and airship.

[winged doom]

Okey, I think it's final version:

[Decroded]

I think the problem is that the character has the same palette as the background.  I had to zoom in to tell it was a character.

I had the same initial impression from the last round of screenshots though it was less of an issue while watching the gameplay video zoomed in where things are moving around.
It seems like a trade-off between a nice congruent scene and visual priority.
There is merit to what u say though and I think the sprite could have something done to help it stand out.

Also haven't had a chance to look at colours in this OP but I wonder if "perceived brightness" had something to do with the issue in that green is seen as brighter than red or blue at the same value.

[Cyangmou]

We have multiple problems here

1) really bad saturation levels - which lead to an artificial impression
2) really bad contrast distribution - in terms of value
3) pretty hard readability of important objects
4) you could do a lot more with the mood and the overall lighting

quick edit where I tried to visually prioritize everything, since I mainly switched colors and really crudely painted and exchanged, it's more to give you an idea.

[Conzeit]

I know you asked about colors, but I think a big problem is that everything is cramped, you got a nice set of elements and flow to it, but everything is competing for space and overwhelming the viewer. You've done a lot of the legwork but you were too ambitious and now you cant give up either your screensize or the amount of elements in there,

if you added say a 50 pixels in every direcction you could fit all the things you want there far far more comfortably, as it is there is no negative space to separate anything

Also, dunno about the saturation, sometimes it's ok for cartoony stuff



actually, gave it a try and just 32 pixels horizontally and 8 pixels vertically is already pretty good.

Pixelart is often lauded for the attention to detail, but also remember you can overdo it, if you put too much stuff in there's no priority to anything and it all becomes noise no matter how well you pixel each little thing.

I also got the feeling with the pallete and the design of the character that you have good ideas but you cramp in too much stuff , your tones in the pallete were all shared by too many places to really diferentiate the layers and the sprite had so much going on you couldnt tell anything apart (that's priceless coming out of me, I suck at holding back on that XD). Specially the sillouethe was really hard to tell, it was all just one big square.

I was about to finish the edit before the last step, but I really wanted to bring out the character, so I modified the level a bit and made the color tweaks.

Character: incredibly high contrast and saturation.

foreground: (actual ground) has some contrast, hi saturation but darker, never as  bright as the character. note how key elements are dark.

background: far less contrast between castle sky and clouds, they actually had the biggest range and that was really really distracting. Brought the castle color closer to the sky blue for atmospheric perspective (look it up) and the volumes of the castle actually have a bit higher contrast.

Try half closing your eyes and looking at your image blurred. You see the shadows of the mountain, the junk and the castle.

Now try it with my edit. The stairs, the char and the junk stand out because they're what you interact with, as it should be. Actually the stairs ground should stand out a bit less because they're not an obstacle, and the ground should stand out more, could probably fill the top of the floor with highlights and remove the darkest shade from the stairs to get that done.

pallete is ripped to shit tho, probably a lot of redundant stuff and I completely changed your character but hopefully I make a point.

EDIT: updated the character a bit and that shitty ledge I made for him is bugging the hell out of me...but I already spent waaay too long on this so I hope I dont fix it Xp

couldnt help myself. atleast the grass is just scribbles :p

Also, totally balls out nasty version of your char
Look at him! I love him, he's such a dirty asshole. the dick.
it's something I know you didnt pixel but I saw inbetween the pixels. Thanks for reminding me that's why I love pixels =)
might wanna use that face for SOMETHING, if ya dont mind :p