Your best work yet! This piece is the type of piece where technique really matters.
My advice for you is to focus on technique and being extra clean and precise. For example the orb shooting the rays should not have that scribbly BG. Be extra anal with your pixels there. This also goes for the actual ray thingies and the figure. Think clean and precise and 'form' instead of texture and busy-ness.
You have purples from that orb that can and should be used the in the red circles to blend the 2 red shades.
If your app can handle it make sure the levels of ALL shades are balanced (they don't seem to be). If you can't do that ask and I or someone else will throw a palette edit up for you.
If you feel brave 'suggest' secondary lighting enough to help the piece overall.

So yea, your best 'start' and I do hope you concentrate and finish it well. Keep posting and I'll keep ranting :)
 


Edited by jalonso - 24 September 2011 at 2:46pm

No fool! You'll make it happen.

You've taken that which worked and left everything that didn't 

It's certainly not good, I suspect. But that's the problem with abstract art. It's impossible to predict what people are going to like about it. The shapes or the colours or whatever else.

I think this can still work in shades of grey, but it makes it a lot harder to create some good shapes without making everything noisy and too busy for the eye. My only suggestion would be to define the shapes better. It doesn't really have to look like anything in particular, but some parts are just noisy and random. At least for my taste.

The problem with abstract [pixel] art is also that it's very hard to provide any feedback, except strictly technical stuff like banding or jaggies.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying it's not good. I was just interpreting jal's comment as saying that your changes were not for the better, as he said "you've taken that which worked". It seemed as if you didn't understand the statement.

I never said that I dislike or like this piece. Truth to be told, I've never seen any abstract pixel art that I've liked. At least not that I can think of. I was just offering general advice, trying to help.