[WIP] RPG battle backgrounds

[eishiya]

The two colours in the background still have similar values and thus look odd. In this case, I think you'd be better off making the trees solid-coloured rather than teal+green.

I'm not sure what you meant when you asked for an example, but here's an edit using brown instead of dithering (on the left only):


And here's an edit replacing the brown with dark red, I think it looks nicer:

[Vinik]

I like it with the new color, and also think eishiya dark red is right on the mark. When I have experimented with GBC swatches and adding an extra shade, I learned that only two extra colors - desaturated darks - one bluish and another redish - are enough to give depth to almost every tight color ramp.

[StelloHexis]

@eishiya. Sorry, I didn't understand. I thought you wanted me to dither the parts in the background so I was confused because I actually tried and it didn't work.

[eishiya]

I like 'em I think  the rocks look very noisy and could use some clean-up. Try to focus on the major planes of the rocks instead of worrying about the "rock texture". If you can get the rocks to look like rocks without texture, you'll find it much easier to add an appropriate texture, or you might even find you don't need any texture.
Think about where the light is coming from. The faces of the rock that face the light most directly will be the lightest colour, the others will be darker, and faces that don't get any light at all, because they're either facing away or because the light is blocked by other rocks, will be darkest.

[StelloHexis]

  How's this?

[eishiya]

Better, but still noisy. Where is the light coming from?

[StelloHexis]

idk im bad at this

[eishiya]

That looks cleaner! And leaving the far rocks fully shaded adds more depth to the scene, good job.
With cleaning, try to eliminate all "orphan pixels", that is pixels unconnected to any cluster, not part of a dither pattern, and which aren't meant to be details.

[StelloHexis]

  Probably nailed it here.

or here lol..(made a few more edits).

[eishiya]

Much better! You've built up a good sense of depth now. Good use of dithering to squeeze an extra dark brown out of your colours, too. Dithering works great when it has enough room to appear like solid colour coverage.

I would critique how none of the rocks seem to have volume (they have details, but no form shadows of their own), but I think with how you've done it so far, adding shadows would just make things too busy-looking, what you have now works well :]