The contrast between your last three colors on your green color
ramp is less then the contrast between your last three colors on your blue color ramp.

and in case you have no idea what I'm talking about here is a visual example.


You could also try hue shifting your color ramps to make it look a
little less plain.

hue shifting is when you sorta move into a warm color as your colors get brighter, and you move into a cool color as your colors get darker.

So with the green you would make the lighter green colors a TINY bit yellow and the darker colors a TINY bit blue.
so the light colors are still WAYYY more green then yellow but you can tell that they are sorta yellow and the darker colors are WAYYY more green then blue but you can tell it's sorta blue.

you can hue shift into totally different colors if you want to but it only looks good if you do it right.


Edited by God_Is_Evil - 15 July 2009 at 4:35pm

So do you understand hue shifting now??????
meh whatever....
I only started a year and two months ago and
When you first start drawing pixel-art it's super hard to get things to
turn out like you were thinking.

Hue is just COLOR. Red, green, blue, orange, purple, etc., are all hues. When people talk of hue-shifting they mean move around the color spectrum rather than just twiddling your brightness knob.

Yes, what you've got there is a hue-shifted ramp. Which is good because making a yellow ramp with brightness alone looks extremely sickly and horrible. Looks like you've got the gist of it.

Also, God_Is_Evil, you don't always have to move into warms in light and cools in dark. I frequently use reds in shadow and blue-greens in light. It all depends on the piece.

[EDIT] Actually, I think your banana's color identity reads more as orange because the pure yellows seem to only be in the highlights. In general, the colors used in the midtones will read as the primary color identity.

Edited by Hatch - 15 July 2009 at 7:02pm

then update your art and show us that you're trying

Ok,
Your hue shifting is a little odd.

Remember to shift a TINY bit from color to color.
Because if your shift suddenly happens then your color
ramp will look more like two color ramps.
Notice how your color ramp is dark blue then SUDDENLY becomes
light pale blue.
and your green colors are green the SUDDENLY become yellow.

when your hue shifting you should start with your mid-tone green
so not too bright not to dark green.
Then make the next lightest color a TINY bit yellow and ect ect tell
you have your lightest color.
then go back to your green mid-tone and start making dark colors
and do the same thing you did with the light colors but shifting into blue
this time for the dark colors.

? hue=color...

if you like the effect, then apply what he's taught you, don't just tell him you like his edit. i'd lose the dithering as well.

Just to clarify for the third time:

The word "hue" means color.
Therefore, hueshifting is the shifting of color. Get it?

Edited by AtomicMushroom - 16 July 2009 at 2:06pm

Here i will try to explain what I do when I'm choosing colors,
Keep in mind that this is just what I do and as hatch was saying their
is no set of rules for hue shifting or color selection.

TERMS ::

Color Ramp - this is a gradient of colors going from dark to light.
EXAMPLE::


Mid tone - A color that is in the middle of the color-ramp.
EXAMPLE::


Hue Shifting - Changing the color of the darker and lighter colors
that are going away from the midtone.
EXAMPLE::



Now the reason i choose to hue shift towards blue for the darker colors and towards yellow for the lighter colors on this color ramp
Is because blue is a cool color and yellow is a warm color.



why use warm and cool colors??
because warm colors look brighter and closer to the eye
and cool colors look darker and farther away from the eye.
so shifting into warm or cool colors can help increase the
amount of depth that your picture has, and hue shifting
makes pics look less dull too.

Another thing you can use to help you emulate depth is
the amount of saturation.
Same idea as before with the warm and cool colors.
the more saturation some thing has the closer to the eye it looks
and the less saturation something has the farther away it looks.

So when I'm choosing my colors i start with a midtone/the main color of the object im drawing then i hue shift into a warm color for the
light colors and hue shift into a cool color for the darker colors.



Edited by God_Is_Evil - 16 July 2009 at 3:14pm