This was the first pixel art thing I drew, I spent a couple weeks on it.
I did a lot of different weird crap from guides for making the sand on the bottom, but mostly, I'll need something better to make dithering and blurring that doesn't look stupid, and looks natural and nice. You can tell I stitched a bunch of the foreground/sandy layer together, but I was more creative redrawing the background layers.

I used to draw those weird crab-claw things I used to make the background all the time as a kid, on the borders of everything. It was pretty cool to find a practical use for that pattern that I think looks pretty good.

Took me 4 hours to figure out how to make Gamemaker studio do the paralax and not blur the hell out of it, but it looks so awesome when it moves against itself.

This was a training piece for me, but despite that I'd love criticism and tips! (I still can't believe how the pixel art sort of clicked for me. It doesn't even make sense that this came out of my fingers!)