[CC] Pig on hoover bike

[Dnilb]

I am making pig enemy for my game, I want him to sit in a hoover bike, this is what I came up with so far:
Looks odd but I can't really tell why, is it the color choices or the shape of the machine?

[fskn]

It's pretty noisy and some groups of colors are really close to one another in terms of value, so it's really hard to tell what's going on.
I can see more or less the outline of the pig, the bandana and the green mohawk, the flag, the exhaust, the dangling cables... but the brown-ish machine thing is just noise to my eyes. The black background isn't helping much either. You could try to put it on a medium to dark gray background to reinforce the sillouette a bit, at least, but the thing would be mainly to work on value to make everything more readable.
I can't tell if the hover bike (?) is turned to the right or more or less coming in our direction.

So, to answer your question, if it is the color choice or the shape of the machine, I'd say it's both.

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EDIT:
If you cleaned up the piece a bit it would be instantly more readable:



But I still can't tell much of what's going on with the bike.
I understand that you want to make the whole thing dirty and grimy, but right now those things are working against your piece.

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Here, I tried cleaning it up a little more:



I don't have the forms of the bike in my mind, so I can't do much about it right now.

[cels]

I agree with fskn that you need to clean up your design.

Start with a very simple shape and a clearly defined light source. Then add more detail as you go. Leave some empty spaces for the eyes to rest.

Example:

[mauriciogamedev]

I think one of the reasons you may think it looks odd is because there is no clear perspective/direction for your piece. Picking a clear perspective for the entire piece may help clearing up the shape of the bike in relation to the rider.

[Dnilb]

This is what I ended up with:

[fskn]

Would you guys say they blend with environment too much?

Yeah... The pig on the hover bike more than the one in the tank, because the teal background makes the latter pop out more (except for its bandana).

That tangent from the pipes in the background going under the hover bike isn't very pleasant either.

Design-wise things look very nice, IMHO.
Although the vertical beams/columns could be better integrated with the floor, but I'm guessing that's still unpolished.

[SeinRuhe]

I kinda dig how things look but backgrounds pixels are twice the size of character pixels, please avoid this at any cost, it kills the mood of the piece so bad it hurts.

If you think they blend too much with the background you can try the following:

- Increase saturation for ​the characters.

- Add a dark outline to the characters.

- Clean up the design of the characters, less detail/shading could make them blend less with the background.

- Desaturate the background a bit or have darker backgrounds.

Of course all of this are options, just experiment and pick what you like best. Keep the good work!

[Dnilb]

Just to clarify, backgrounds are not made by me.
They were provided by client, I made characters before I received them.
(I only knew that the theme is supposed to be post-apo)

[SeinRuhe]

If that's the case characters still should match the pixel measurement of the background when in a mockup, so, in this case characters need to be enlarged or BG needs to be shrunk down to make both match a 1:1px ratio.

[Dnilb]

I didn't fix the pixel ratio yet, trying to get sprites to stand out first:

-New flying enemy
-Hover bike and bandana recolor
-Added black outline to all enemies

Is this any better?
Imo black outline looks fine on hover bike but not so much on tank and flying enemy.

[fskn]

They do look better, yes. IMHO, anyway.

Still, I tried cleaning them up a bit more:



I think it helps judging the colors a bit better if I use a medium-dark grey background, so I put them in one.
I tried making the tank a bit less organic looking (dunno if I was successful or not) by using more regular forms and 45 degree angles.
I can't understand the forms of the bike very well yet, so I invented a little.
Reshaded a bit of both to try and get a more consistent lighting.
Tried to hue-shift the colors on the bike so it doesn't look too monochromatic.

Didn't mess up with the enemy, but it does have lighting/shading problems as well. There's some pillow shading/banding going on and it's a bit too dark.

One problem that I can see right away (yet unrelated to color or readability) is that the background kind of tries to follow some perspective by having the floor at an angle and the platforms perfectly horizontal, but if your tank for some reason has to go down to the floor level, then it will (may?) look inconsistent. I mean, it does look a little already because the treads are not aligned horizontally.

[Dnilb]

Thanks for all the help, I ended up using polished version made by @fskn.
Here's my attempts at animation:

I think tank looks fine, not so happy about flag movement on motor enemy.

[RurdBem]

Its fantastic, but it does seem a little too curved for a military vehicle. At the moment it looks more like a civilian luxury bike.

...not that its not awesome, mind