Avatar and banner project [WIP]

[Shrike]

So a friend of mine asked me to pixel him a avatar and a banner. The av is almost done, but i'm stuck mostly on the banner.

I'm really terrible at drawing large-scale pixelart, and i need to get better before i finish this piece.
So, here goes:


i was thinking a dirt road and like tall grass, but i cant draw either of those. 
The driver guy isnt drawn by me, thats just there for scale. ill draw my own one the background is done.
The avatar is pretty much done, just have to pixel a driver.


C&C on the sky in both would be appriciated as well!
i really need some help! 0__0

[Agent green]

I have never done large pixel art, but mabye try splitting it up into smaller bits so then it is lots of small pixel art?

Banner reminds me of a game i used to play when i was young, Wacky Races.

[JonathanOfDrain]

Sorry to say but this isn't pixel art. Looks like you copied something from a .jpeg and pasted it on your pixeled background. Also the clouds look flat and very sharp. Try rounding them out a bit and throwing some AA on them. Only needs a little.

[Jamie]

Sorry to say but this isn't pixel art. Looks like you copied something from a .jpeg and pasted it on your pixeled background. Also the clouds look flat and very sharp. Try rounding them out a bit and throwing some AA on them. Only needs a little.

The driver guy isnt drawn by me, thats just there for scale. ill draw my own one the background is done.

[Terley]

Id just like to add before I go to sleep, the sky usually becomes lighter towards the horizon. It's down to the distance the scattered light has to travel to us. Just look up why the sky is blue, usually follows it somewhere.

I wouldn't concern yourself with fancy dithering or being too neat, roughly jot everything in and slowly clean up parts bit by bit. If you simply break down the image into small parts to be worked on you won't have any consistancy with this. Just take it bit by bit, are you doing anything with the horizon? The clouds, get some reference pictures to push you in the right direction.

It'd seem a bit of a waste just having sky, grass, dirt road and kart racer.. Parts will be left really empty with no interest and just repeative texture.

Just throwing out a ms-paint over, may help..

[Shrike]

Wow, that helps a ton. Thanks. i always do the reverse thing w/ the sky... 

ill fill it up some more, give it more things to look at. Ill get to it later today.......

BTW, this is based off Kartrider.... www.kartrider.com
 

[Shrike]

fixed av. 

this one is almost done...
just have to add Dao. (Little guy in banner.)

[Shrike]

Ref pic for clouds.

Heres the banner layout so far:

Still have alot more to add... but i think its going in the right direction. the clouds arn't supposed to be uber realistic, just kind of happy.
i think i'm going to change the shadow direction... it kind of looks like the sun is setting right now.
What do you think of the progress so far?

[Aiko]

Your rock appears to have both light and shadow in the same direction. I've never been very good at backlighting but I threw together a quick demonstrative edit anyway. I added texture which if you're going for the cel-shaded style you don't have to include, but I think I have the light down.



I'd also tone down the grass, that's hurting my eyes...

[Shrike]

Thanks for pointing that out, didn't notice. But this is just very the basic layout, ill de-saturate the grass before this is done.


update. 
Haven't been working on it much, my life just exploded.