Do I spot a gradient? 
Interesting idea. The colours, most notably at the bottom, does get a little hard on the eyes, but it does give a nice effect on the trees. It just hit me that making the characters in the same style would make for an interesting experiment. Many games have benefited from mimicking artwork stereotypes. I imagine this copying the Japanese landscape style that spread over western Europe at the time of Van Gogh. Hmm... I feel like doing some sketching now...
Wasn't planning on giving any specific crits. I did notice however that the belt on your character furthest to the left (the list at the top) looks messy rather than showing his belts. Adding a dark colour to separate them would help. I know you're aiming to keep contrast in the characters center low, but seeing how much they stick out from the background as it is, I don't think it's very noticeable. At the moment at least.
yeah i considered that as an even larger experiment, but i included these characters to avoid making a second thread with just some backgrounds ^^
If you want to go for it, please do, and please post here i would love to see what you come up with
it is a gradient, again because its rushed and only a fockup. maybe kenneth will defend me?
as for the belt....thats a good call. he was done first, and not as separate pieces (i later cut him up to make the parts) if i do anything with these guys, that will be #2 on the fix list (#1 being the leg spread)
examples of this work.....its really just colored ink and white paint. its a very friendly medium to work with, because it goes even on light stock without buckling it, the ink and gauche is so dry compared to say aquarelle, though i use a saunders-waterford paper, cold-press, medium texture, pre-washed in a 4-1 mix of water to sepia ink. For me it was a natural evolution of my previous experiments with watercolors, but it certainly shows a turn-of-the-century asian influence in the colors and the simplicity and presents much the same as a more traditional sumi calligraphic painting. if you want to see samples, look up any of those things i just mentioned. if you want to see my work, buy me a camera
