Need CC on Terrain Tiles

[guadalcanal]

This is a sample of the different terrains/terrain transitions that I've created so far. I have no experience in this area, but I'm pretty happy with them. Since I am happy with them, I'm sure that I'm doing something in a suboptimal way, which is why I came here. The tiles are 45x45 px, but they are all scaled down from 90x90 tiles. What should I do differently to improve upon them? (Or should I scrap it and restart from scratch?)

Thank you!

[Gil]

Post the 90x90 tiles, we can't really comment on scaled down art, as it hides technique. I can tell that the grass is pillow shaded (there's no light source, the color just becomes brighter towards the middle of a leaf). I like the sea colors and the beach rocks (I'm a sucker for tinted grays). The whole piece has a sunny feel to it, which is good, though maybe the greens are a bit too dark and could use some yellow introduced into them.

So yeah, show us the full tiles and maybe explain why you are scaling them down.

[guadalcanal]

Ok, here is an example with full-sized tiles. I'm scaling them down mostly because I think they look better smaller, and since I'm not exactly an expert pixel artist it is easier for me to make larger images and resize them than to impart detail in such a small space.

What would be a way to avoid pillow shading? Where should I place the bright spots of the leaves? Right now I make the leaves (it's supposed to be a jungle) basically by drawing random lines all over and filling them in.

Thank you for the quick reply!

[Gil]

First step is usually to find some references. They can be from a game you like, or something from real life. Here's an example:

Spoiler

The workflow you chose is drawing lines to try and represent the shapes you want, then color them in. So, try to find edges in that references and how they work and copy that. For shading, again, try to figure out which parts of a leaf appear lighter/darker and start filling in those leaves.

[guadalcanal]

The new and (maybe) improved version. I used 4 models of banana trees, palm trees, taro leaves, and ferns to help draw the tiles. Before I begin the even more arduous task of updating the transition tiles, what things on the new jungle need changing? Also, are there any strategies to make pixel art making... faster? Is it normal for this to take an hour? Is practice the only thing that will really help efficiency? Thanks again I really appreciate the help.

[Gil]

Efficiency is based on experience yes, but 1 hour is pretty fast already. I might take easily 4 or 5 hours on something like that. When the first tile is done though, transitions go way quicker for me.

That looks a lot better already. The contrast is too low though. You need darker areas and lighter areas, everything now is too uniformly medium green.