[WIP] Bisected Corpse of an Elder God

[JayKnox]

I've started working on one of the larger pixel pieces I've attempted. This is going to be a sort of "splash screen" for a final boss fight in a tabletop campaign I've been working on. It's meant to depict the (still kinda alive) bisected elder god who serves as the main antagonist.

What I'm looking for crit-wise is advice on the surroundings (heaped ruins of an ancient modern city), and general advice on lighting and composition. I think the god's pose and vibe of what I have so far are definitely what I'm going for in the finished piece, but otherwise everything is up for possible change. Obviously the left side of the piece is basically empty right now and the lighting and color in general is the opposite of final. By the end I'd like to strike a balance between legibility and ambiguity in the background ruins, and I'd like the sense of scale to be clear, but I'm honestly not very good with plotting out dim lighting.

Any thoughts or crit are more than welcome.


Edit:



Added in a bit more foreground ruin sketching and a bit more work elsewhere.

Edit2:



More detail work, added mushrooms, did some perspective work on the ground, started making more headway on the general shape of the background.

[cels]

Really cool scene but extremely ambitious in terms of canvas size and lighting.

Is the halo intended to be the only light source? The background is basically black, but the wall of the ruins in the foreground (right side) are clearly lit on the opposite side of the light source. It's bit visually confusing that there appears to be ambient light in the foreground yet the background is as black as space.

Same with the mushrooms, which have a visible top that is brighter than their bottom, even though the only visible light source appears to be the halo (and to a lesser extent, the blue flowers). The tree appears quite well lit but the backward slanting building on the far left is quite dark.

This kind of scene is beyond my skill level but I wonder if you've picked light conditions that have more "dire" consequences than you intended. Or maybe everything hasn't been revealed yet, since you've added a rather bright aqueduct in the background.

[eliddell]

I think I see an attempt at god-rays indicating a light source from above there, but they're so faint it's difficult to make out.  Punch up the contrast on those, I guess?