[WIP] LostWinds 8-bit

[dock]

I'm still working on both of these things, so any feedback would be appreciated. ^^

[PypeBros]

great potential! the background is sometimes a bit confused (e.g. those large rocks ? hanging from the ceiling) and might benefit of contrast depending on the depth of each item.
The running animation is nicely done except that curious red line appearing above the eyes and flashing bar on the hat. It might be easier to read if the two legs were of different color, too ...

[Atnas]

Really stylish and striking character. The environment on the other hand is kind of flat and uninteresting, namely the dither into black on the grass. In addition to being flat, some things on the foreground just don't read, namely the water and, is it a log?

Trying to address the ground problem:

I also bulked up the bush towards the middle. If anything, the color should recede towards the edges, not the center. A symmetrical bush might be more aesthetic I think the edge of the grass could look really nice if you made uniform spikes going down into the dirt, as your style is rather geometrically pleasing, using straight edges and lots of rectangles. If you keep the background light, you can keep saturation, which I think is important.

Be careful about diversity, all the different plants next to each other throw away a lot of unity. I think that's what this needs most, unity in style and repetition of elements.

[dock]

Thanks for the feedback!

PypeBros, I see what you mean about the red line. I think it was supposed to be a shadow, but doesn't really make sense or add anything. I'm not sure I can change the colours of the legs really as I'm out of colours, and they're hard to make-out individually in the game due to them running at double speed relative to the arms. It's a weird run cycle to capture!

Atnas, you're right that this stil needs a fair amount of work. The dither into black is tricky though, because LostWinds on Wii has that fade to black look on it too.  I should probably silhouette things in the background more clearly though, and keep things more detailed up close. The weird stacks of rocks with large rocks on top looks a bit strange too... though I ought to at least make mine balance
 
This is the sort of area I was trying for:

[Shrike]

Good looking project you got going here! very stylish, i like it a lot.

One thing that bugs me- i the run animation should have a little bit of head turn. Considering all the stuff on his head, it would be aesthetically pleasing. (Much credit to Firefox on the spelling on the last word.)

i like the environment, but the tree branches in the background dont seem to be touching the leaves all the time.