[C+C] Futuristic Cityscape

[Tortoise]

I made this thing recently and I wanted to get some advice on it before I try and animate it, especially with making the background and making the buildings more interesting, thanks in advance.

Inspired by Half-Life and the look of the Dominion ships in Star Trek.

A smiley face for your troubles;

[MysteryMeat]

this is more for the animation part, but have aome of the ships facing the other way. gives it more of a busy back-and-forth feel.

[wzl]

This is pretty cool, but it lacks depth and could use some more.. visual explaining. some of these lights and doodads are there for no apparent reason other than "this is the future".
Also it is all very boxy and angular, yet flat, making it pretty..static or rigid.
I didnt do a full edit since its quite a big canvas, but i guess you can see my points.
I added a light source, gave the buildings more depth, tried to break up the very straight and monotonous windows and did some other things here and there.
Overall composition wise it is quite weak(something i didnt adress in the edit). all buildings have almost the same height, there is no real guidance for the eye, no eyecatcher, no focal point. this right now feels very much like "LOOK, CITY!". i'm sure you can work this out a bit more

I worked these out on stream, talking about it in some more detail, so you might wanna check that (although the first couple minutes got muted, thanks twitch)
City scapes are out of my comfortzone so i tried to make the best of it.

Twitch Vod

[MysteryMeat]

oh man, color cohesion on that guy's rework is super good, I reccomend looking close at what he did there. Really reduced the eye-glare you get out of certain color schemes.

[Tortoise]

Was away on a thing, but here's the thing;

[MysteryMeat]

Looks kinda empty now, not sure if that works in it's favor.
Looks less like a city and more like a small town with a couple sky-scrapers in, like you see around michigan a lot.

[heyguy]

I like your darker, more busier cityscape better. This has a more muted and foggy look to it. I feel like the lighter tones and the clouds sort of distract from the cityscape too. Are the longish horizontal pink lines on the buildings windows or lights? Because I'm not sure they'd look that same bright pink due to atmospheric perspective in the background buildings if windows. The bottom clouds look out of place to me too, especially the mid ground ones (unless this is a cloud city?), just my opinion though.

Also, on your original image, you had a tangent I found a little distracting. In the center, the building with the slanting pink windowed side and the building behind (slanting pink roof). They're positioned in a way where they seem to be sharing the same vertical pixel lines.

[Tortoise]

is this any better?

[Double7]

Try adding some texture to the side of the buildings. Just a slightly darker color to make the image feel fuller and a little more crowded. As a city should feel 

You could also try to add destruction to the city if it is being bombed (I assume that is what is happening at the moment), so some explosions to catch the viewers eye.

I really enjoy the piece though, the colors are very appealing and go together very well

[Xer0bot]

I believe those are ships in the far and not bombs being dropped, read an article that talked about the ways viewers see things. If someone's seeing it as bombs then maybe make a change to that.. How ever I believe as OP said he wants to animate it later on which means that we'll be able to see that those are infact ships in the distance no doubt.

What I'd like to see is some of what wzi is showing, I remember the drive to work this morning, the sun was still under the horizon how ever the light was starting to show, or rather it could have been setting too, which left a lot of darkness how ever the atmosphere was lit up by a few shades. eventually going into blue.

I get the impression that it's foggy over there perhaps due to pollution..