looks much better. the squiggly lines in the clouds and sand look like random scribbles though, I'd remove them entirely from the clouds (and possibly see how white highlights look on the clouds instead), and make the texture on the ground look a bit more purposeful. google some images of desert floors, you might make wavy sand dunes, dried craggy dirt, etc. highlight on the slime is a little weak, I'd brighten in a bit. You should also think about how the slime is shaded. If the sun is behind him, and the shadow is cast in from of him, then the shadow should be on his front side, rather than just the left corner.
much improved though, kutgw
Thanks a lot. I appreciate this very much and now I know the direction for studying. Thanks.
the sun is huge. its outline is jaggy it has noisy shading, though really it should just be a ball of light. bottoms of the clouds are too flat. given the intensity of the sun, shadows should be darker (aka more contrast). the dithering on the slime isn't adding anything. it looks like you went for a side-scroller perspective, then gave the slime a cast shadow as if it were in a setting with more depth. this makes the lack of a horizon strange.
The more I look at this to comment on it the more I realize it's staring into my soul. O_O;;
It's a good start. Here's a few things I'm noticing and how to improve them-
• The lighting is alright and the shadow from the sun seems fine based on the angle of the sun. The angle this is all viewed at is odd though, because the slime is sitting directly on top of the horizon line which suggests we're seeing it from a side view but the shadow from the sun is coming toward us on the grass as if we're looking at the grass from above rather than the side. Try using a ground style that's obviously a side view such as what you see in sonic and mario where the grass sits on top and there's dirt underneath.
• I'm not sure that the dithering is even all that necessary here. It's not bad, I just kind of like the look of clean edges sometimes and things don't always have to be dithered. Some people here feel that dithering is more of an advanced technique anyways.
• Some of the colors are extremely similar to each other. For example, there's a little spot of green under the slime's right eye that's very hard to see because that green is nearly the same as the green around it. Try eliminating unneeded colors and having stronger variation between the colors that are left.
• This is obviously more cartoonish than realistic, so this may not be relevant, but the sun isn't really yellow like that. Under most weather/time conditions the sun in the sky is basically white, like this. Even when it is yellow, it's usually a much brighter yellow that's close to white.
Thank you very much. I'll take your advice to action.