Pixel Joint Forum: Cacti at night

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This is my first go at pixel art... any comments are greatly appreciated.  In the end I want a cloudy sky (clouds are HARD) and another cactus up close, with good sand too.

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Loonybin Seaman Joined: 05 July 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 31	Topic: Cacti at night Posted: 07 July 2011 at 2:02pm
	This is my first go at pixel art... any comments are greatly appreciated. In the end I want a cloudy sky (clouds are HARD) and another cactus up close, with good sand too.
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Loonybin Seaman Joined: 05 July 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 31	Posted: 07 July 2011 at 3:30pm
	shadow and better cactus arms...
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Psychotic_Carp Commander Joined: 02 April 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1008	Posted: 07 July 2011 at 9:11pm
	Decrease the dither a bit and the sand needs a bit more detail maybe some bumps ?
	got game?
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Tart Seaman Joined: 14 April 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 26	Posted: 07 July 2011 at 10:42pm
	The angle of your shadow is not in line with your light source. At the angle you have shown, you'd expect the moon to be further to our right in order for it to work (I think the composition may look better that way as well). Draw a line from the center of the moon to the center of the cactus, and that line should give you the proper angle of the shadow. Your dithering doesn't follow any pattern, so right now it just looks like noise around the moon. You could use some more depth to the image with more shadows and tones to the landscape. The night sky has a natural gradient to it, and the hill of sand should indicate its shape through shadows and highlights. The color of your sand looks like it should be daylight. Adjust your color to fit the proper ambiance of the environment.
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Loonybin Seaman Joined: 05 July 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 31	Posted: 07 July 2011 at 11:10pm
	Thank you sooba. I hadn't worked on the sky or sand yet. I'll try to clean up dithering and fix the shadow. Is there a specific pattern that would go well around the moon?
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Loonybin Seaman Joined: 05 July 2011 Online Status: Offline Posts: 31	Posted: 08 July 2011 at 11:08pm

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CELS Commander Joined: 23 September 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 758	Posted: 09 July 2011 at 10:29am
	Personally, I thought the colour of the sky was much better in the original. It matched the colour of the sand nicely. The shadow still doesn't look natural. It has approximately the right angle, but there are two problems: 1) The cactus casts a short shadow, which would imply that the light source is rather high above. If the light source is low, the shadow would be long. Imagine your own long shadow on the ground, as the sun sets. 2) The moon is on the far side of the hill (or dune), and very low. That would mean everything on this side of the hill would be covered in shadow, so there would be no separate shadow from the cactus. If the moon was high enough that the light covered this whole side of the hill (in which case the shadow would be really short), you would need to warp the shape of the shadow to account for the spherical shape of the hill. Right now, the shadow looks like it's on a flat surface.
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Tart Seaman Joined: 14 April 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 26	Posted: 11 July 2011 at 10:10am
	http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299 Scroll down to "dithering" in order to see what I mean by patters. It's really up to you depending on how you want the light to gradiate. I imagine 50/50 is probably what you'll want to use.
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