my little world, monsters! ... [please C&C]

[Majoris]

Did you change anything there?? 

I didn't mean the ball man, person, thing if that's what you changed. I meant (yes, it made NO SENSE whatsoever, but I suck at describing things over the internet. I need to be in person!!! With hand gestures and everything....) that the space that you pointed out in your "look bad?" edit made the platform not look solid/secured to the ground because it "didn't fit".

I'm sorry I say things that appear to be completely random. 

[PypeBros]

Did you change anything there?? 

I didn't mean the ball man, person, thing if that's what you changed.

No, i haven't touched Bilou (the name of the ball).

I meant (...) that the space that you pointed out in your "look bad?" edit made the platform not look solid/secured to the ground because it "didn't fit".

yep. And to fix that, i tried to move the tree and the extra piece of ground a bit "deeper" in the grass line, to make them better "anchored" in the ground, rather than just "dropped over the ground". I intend to add more "visible" grass around it (like around the tree's roots, but looking better  )

I'm sorry I say things that appear to be completely random. 

np.

[zeid]

Kill like half a dozen colours. You are using way to many and to little effect, organise a decent palette and apply highlights and shading according to the material, in the edit I have made I use 6 colours including transparancy and I chose a liquidy/reflective material. Hence the hightlight underneath caused by light reflecting of the ground. Use a grey background as the placeholder background, the green you have set on right now is way to saturated and will affect how your sprites seem to look.

[PypeBros]

Kill like half a dozen colours. You are using way to many and to little effect

Hmm. Very interesting update. it's a bit hard to me to admit i like the look of your Bilou while i've been giving him a rather "plastic" and highly-saturated look for about 10 years now As for the colours, the nintendo DS provides 16 palettes of 256 colours, so i tend to "overuse" some ... I might try to rationalize all this ...

Use a grey background as the placeholder background, the green you have set on right now is way to saturated and will affect how your sprites seem to look.

Good point. Currently my sprite editor uses almost magenta background (it was supposed to be "stylish"), but it's indeed hard to work with low-saturation colours then ... i'll give grays a try

[AdamAtomic]

Don't cop out on this like that, man.  Zeid is 100% spot on with his crits.  Your environments use straight brown and green ramps with colors that are way too close together, and the way you've been rendering i guess this blue ball with googly eyes for the last decade uses shades that are so close it barely even looks like pixel art.  Not to mention that the 16x256 setup on the DS is far and away the least efficient color mode with the fewest tiles!

Just because you've been doing something for 10 years doesn't mean you've been doing it right.

You need to think about shapes, volumes, color, contrast, and the fact that your character is even less interesting to look at than Kirby.

[AdamAtomic]

Could you be any harsher on him, Adam? Where's the "constructive" part?

Personally, I don't see enough content to give a real opinion for, Pype. I need to see more development before I can provide what little advice I'm capable of.

Your environments use straight brown and green ramps with colors that are way too close together

You need to think about shapes, volumes, color, contrast, and the fact that your character is even less interesting to look at than Kirby.

Oh, I don't know, half my post?  Where, may I ask, are the constructive suggestions in YOUR post?

[zeid]

>>>
see not so glossy, thats all it takes to make it look a little more plastic and less slimey! Removal of 1 highlight in some areas makes it look a little cartoony as well. I hope that gives you some ideas...
Just because you can use a lot of colours doesn't mean you should. Animation for one thing will become a lot harder if you are trying to put loads of unnecessary colours in all the frames, it also becomes harder to make changes to the image. If you look at the two images of my and yours side by side, you might notice mine pops out a lot more, this will make it stick out to the player so he/she doesn't lose it in the environment. Furthermore it gains a better sense of volume/looks a lot more 3dimensional as it is actually portraying where the light will hit it. The ramping of the colours is subtle enough for no one to notice the stark transition, but also bold enough for it to look like a highlight.
I personally am not that impressed with the design of the character/s either the blob seems a little generic and the worm things look, well like worms from the same named game. However if that is the way you want to go, I suppose its fine though something a little more original looking wouldn't hurt.
This post was probably a little unnecassary as all it did was serve to re-itterate what has already been said... But meh'.

[HughSpectrum]

Adam Atomic also right that the environment uses colors too close together and have straight ramps.  You could hue shift the shades gradually from the reddish brown into more yellowish browns in order to have a better connection to the green in the picture.  And a little more contrast is definitely welcome, because I found that contrast helps build shapes, while less contrasting objects tend to look more flat.  Try not to be extreme, though, since you don't want sprites to clash with the tiles.

You could also desaturate the solid background color to make foreground objects pop out even more.

And the worms have bad selout.  It's better that you keep outlines connected, especially for sprites as small as those.

[MrMister]

10 years ago is exactly what I think when I see this.
The mushroom in the tree is really arbitrary and you should try adding some more of em to make the scene more interesting

[AdamAtomic]

Adam: My post was merely being honest. While it's true that he has some work there, I don't think that there's enough to start critiquing. There's not enough content. I'd like to see him add more to the piece. That's pretty neutral, and not a criticism. I don't think it was necessary to tell him his character looked less interesting than Kirby. That's a really good way to piss somebody off and not respect what you have to say. For all we know, he may have upgrades and other gameplay mechanics to attach to him and make him a more interesting character. Quite a few games start out with the main character looking rather drab and end up with him/her/it decked out and impressive. His shape may also be a gameplay mechanic in and of itself; he may roll and require momentum in order to jump.

A tileset, items, enemies, and main character are not enough to start critiquing?   Do you need to see his entire body of work before you can contribute one useful comment?  I don't see how your comments have been constructive or useful in any light.  I don't care if your post was honest.  It doesn't make any sense, and it is not critical.

As far as your problems with my comments...let's keep it to PMs from now on.  I don't especially care if somebody craps on me after I spend time trying to help someone else improve as an artist, but I would prefer it was done in private, if only for the sake of your reputation.

What we have here is something that we have on Pixelation at least a few times a year.  Somebody who claims years and years of experience, has massive flaws in their work, and doesn't make any changes based on lots of good feedback and edits, or even acknowledge the massive problems with their art, claiming it is their "style" and they've been doing it for a long time, so that should be good enough.

Generally speaking, coddling and soft words do not shake this kind of artist out of their bad habits and get them to look at their own work with the kind of critical eye that they need in order to improve as an artist.  Pixelation is not a feel-good, ass-patting pixel art message board.  Pixelation is for people who want to improve.  People who claim to want to improve and then justify the lack of improvement by saying the work is about as good as it is going to get...I do not have time to be polite to these people.  They get the truth, whether they (or you) like it or not.  That is the whole point of Pixelation.