Re:

[leveler50]

Re:
 
 

[DasPixelArtistBen]

 

[thedaemon]

The character portraits suffer from pillow shading.
Gameplay screenshot wise:
Do you really need black outlines over everything?
Why not use contrast instead?
What's up with the solid filled color shapes?

[leveler50]

Thanks for the comments thedaemon and DasPixelArtistBen.

The character portraits will be probably all redone by our French artist when he has time. We are thinking to go 64x64 pixels in the portraits instead of 32x32.

We don't need the black outlines. I think we should try without them.

Solid filled color shapes should have some texture in them too. Haven't had time or concentration to notice that. :-) They are some weird thing found only from this planet. We try to make the ground look unique and recognizable with them.

[leveler50]

Without black borders (except for the characters, they'll be changed later):
 
Looks good to my taste. I still used pretty dark lines here and there. What do you say thadaemon? Doesn't the buildings suffer from the pillow shading or is the shading good there?


 

[thedaemon]

I am currently working on an edit, sorry I haven't posted it yet, still a heavy WIP. You currently have hundreds of colors, which is overkill as well as many other things that bother me, but a picture says a thousand words so I will post it as soon as I get it close to what I want to explain.

Edit:


I did a few things here but gave up as you have way too many colors and it looks like you didn't pixel this. The black outlines really aren't needed and as you can see in a few areas look fine where I removed them. I can't really read the characters on the screen so I wasn't sure how to edit them besides removing that really dark black. Throughout your palette you have many colors that are nearly identical to a few others. Notice how I removed the black shadows. Shadows should not be black but reflect the ground that they are cast on. I edited a few buildings as well but didn't touch the ground much. Again, you have outlines over everything which I don't think so be there.

Here is a image with reduced colors, down to 32 colors. (Note I didn't finish my edits on this one.) I know there are a few details missing but that's because I used software to reduce the colors and didn't do it manually. As you can see much of the detail remains.


I hope this helps some.

[Blueschist]

Some of these designs are pretty fun, but they suffer from overly busy shading, and very low contrast. You can reduce your color count tremendously and improve readability by working with simpler clusters and colors with higher contrast. I made a quick colorover of one of your aliens to try to demonstrate this.

[leveler50]

Really good job guys! I'm impressed but moreover I need to do the things that you suggested. Good tips and suggestions. I'll get back to this later.

[leveler50]

 We are thinking to go 64px*64px instead of 32px*32px with the character. It's very challenging and requires input of several artists. Is the contrast etc. good?