[C+ C] Planet Time

[fingas10]

What do you guys think of my planets so far? I want to keep them simple and small but I feel like some of them don't pop out enough. Any tips?



Also as they will be used in game:

[MysteryMeat]

Try making the shading harder with just the rim lighting. Like so!
I didn't have time to do all the planets (it's pretty late here!) but hopefully this illustrates my idea some.

[fingas10]

I will try it and see how it looks on the space background! Thanks.

[MysteryMeat]

Oh, you reply fast! Dang!
Well, as one last aside, don't feel the need to double-size anything! The site as a zoom function built in, we much prefer having 1:1 scale uploads here as it makes it easier to edit things!

[[Friends] Ro$$]

I think Meat is getting at half of the problem: The planets look flat and the rim around them makes them look more like pancakes. Try looking up how other people handle light so that they can make their objects appear spherical.
Here's a decent example

credit:someone's tumblr page  I arrived at after searching "pixel art sphere"

I think with this sort of shading they'll pop exactly how you want them to!

[fingas10]

The problem with using spheres as an example is that light from a sun or distant huge light source on another huge object is much more diffuse and has little to reflect off of. you don't have a spotlight effect like you would see on a ball or sphere. I also want to keep them relatively simple because I must make a huge quantity so I can have extremely elaborate shading. hmm...

[dpixel]

On stuff this small, I would avoid dithering as much as possible.  The single pixel thing makes it look too busy and unrealistic.
And the colors shouldn't be as saturated since they are way in the distance and usually be on a dark background.
Edit:

[0xDB]

Below are two pictures, one is a nasa photo of jupiter, the other is a reference for light on form from proko.com.

Note how on the planet, the light transitions from halftones to just shadow and it stays black then. There is no core shadow on the planet because there is nothing in space out there that would reflect light back onto the side of the planet lying in shadow.

Unless a planet is lit from the back, there should be no rim lighting. So to make planets appear spherical, pick the light source in a way that you draw between 50% and 60% of the planet in light and halftones along a nice curve(which should be half of an ellipse == a circle in perspective(which cuts the sphere in half, perpendicular to the direction of light)) and then leave the remaining 50% to 40% of the planet black, no rim light on the black side.

[fingas10]

Dpixel I love your revisions but I just dont have time for that much layering. Those planets look awesome though. I might use your clustering to go back over a few of mine. I know they are rather saturated but it is for a game, I want them to pop a bit.