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The thumbnail really appealed to me with its choice of colours that stood out against the transparent background, that's what brought me to the page proper. Marvin looks good in isolation but with the background it seems like some colours play poorly against each other, like the base green colour clashing with the yellow for the Martians' beaks and the desaturated red used for their fur (and the flag). It's difficult to adjust those without also adjusting the entire palette bit by bit. What can help in cases like these is to filter the entire picture in greyscale format, so you can get a better idea of the values in your picture, and which colours are the same/similar in value and end up clashing and hurting the eyes.
Because the Looney Tunes are almost always drawn they have outlines to separate the colours that make up their designs. When you go for an outlineless rendering style you have to keep in mind that some colours (like the Martians' green and orange) may naturally clash without some kind of border, or colour that separates the two. Lines inside the characters' silhouette or some selective shading can help.
As a thought experiment I tried reducing the brightness of the background a little and tampering with some of the Martian colours, adding a only little shading on the left Martian's neck and collar-fur where it made sense to separate the two colours. I also show the original picture filtered to greyscale format, so you have an idea of the values it contains. The link to the edited picture is here. This isn't the method I think you HAVE to take, but I hope it gives you an idea of the tools you can use to solve this kind of pixelart puzzle.
Glad to see a fellow Looney Tunes fan on the site. It's always fun and interesting seeing subjects like Western cartoons interpreted in pixel form
Yeah, I think that just might be it. I'm not too good with compositions yet, so I'll need to experiment some more with it :)
Yeah, I can see why the green you used for AA and midtones could be unappealing. It might alternately be a composition thing? His body is leaning right up against the vertical line, and his arm and foot are right along the horizontal ones. And he's super close to Marvin. IDK, I like the art a lot, it's just weird that the elements don't jell together when they're so nice on their own.
True! I tried using the other greens in the palette and I didn't find them very appealing on them. I'll mess with it some more but that's a pretty valid critique. Thanks for pointing it out!
I kinda wonder whether you shoulda used a darker shade of green on the non-Marvins? The one on the left is a little distractingly bright, and distracts from Marvin as the central focus of the piece
I love this btw.
Wow! Thank you so much for your critique and edits!
I agree that the colors were somewhat clashing, but I did this for a server challenge with a set palette (I believe it was Stardust32) and I wanted to give a Roberston-like quality to the martians, so I opted to give them the lighter green. Messing with the palette now, I see that the background and floor invite all sorts of clashing problems, which I didn't think about before. I have been trying to consider values more and more lately, so I appreciate looking back at my works and seeing where I could have added a bit more detail or alterations for the sake of readability