Tehehe you got me! All the big statues, paintings and altarpieces (and the baldachin) are a reference to classical art! For this first iteration I chose a few specific pieces, such as Le Génie du Mal, Michelangelo's Pietà and Verschaffelt's Archangel Michael. The paintings are Beato Angelico's Annunciation, Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi and Madonna Litta, Caravaggio's Saint Jerome. The other two paintings are a bit of an imitation without an exact reference!

Hehe, you're too kind, top-down is definitely my comfort zone!
I think I'll do something a little different next, both in tone and context!

I now need to improve my own style and palette game to match you and Trigonomicon because you both are clearly winning at my own game! Damn!
(absolutely love this, made my day huahauh)

Thank you jok! Yep, sprites do follow gbc limitations in this piece (I sometimes apply 5 colors instead of 4, but for this piece it's all 4 colors including transparency).
Also there's a general grid disposition of 16x16 tiles, with 8x8 elements occasionally displaced for decoration. :'>

Tiles are also *almost always* 4 colors on 8x8 basis, but I'm not that observant on that. Let's say that for these pieces (mockups meant to showcase my tilesets and character packs) I prioritized the overall feeling rather than a philological approach (which would be hard to mantain for cutomers using these packs according to their personal need).

I think I could post a timelapse for the next project! It's a bit hard to do as I tend to work separate ways on tilesets, going back and forth from structures to decorations to palette and the other way round!
I posted some "evolution" pieces on X / YT for a few maps I made in case you're interested: those are not true timelapses, but somehow give the idea of evolving pieces :'>

Thank you! I think I got a bit overwhelmed with specific movements, animations, frames and relative delays around the piece, but it was too much fun "getting with the flow" of each character and animal around! I learnt a few things too, and it's something I will bring onto my next experiments! :')

Thank you hby! Lovely to find you there!
I have to say that the wind effect was a bit of an afterthought (I initially paved the whole city, with different mossy stone flooring - but it felt wrong for the location!) and I'm quite happy that I've got to experiment with it a bit. And yeah, once I settled the movement, I felt that Butterflies and characters had somehow to "feel" it, each in its own way! :'P

Thank you so much Reo! I have to say that Link's Awakening is really one of (if not THE) reasons I became a pixel artist in the first place. As a little kid in school I used to draw adventure maps on squared notebooks all the time and, well, that was the beginning for me - then MS paint (on a gifted Windows 98 pc) came a few years later! :'P

Thank youu! I would LOVE to see game remakes keeping pixel art. Not that I don't like stylized 3D or "2D-HD", but a true pixel remake of a classic would be incredible!

Thank you, especially for the time and care you put into exploring the piece! :'P
I guess it can be... a bit much on the eye? But I am so happy to hear it reeled you in, somehow! Regigigas is referenced there on that specific little statue and... on a larger scale, with the big place (I put the arched windows in the same pattern as its dots, and the buttresses and pillars around imitate the patterns on its arms!) Also, the big arched rock that goes into the sea is meant as a quote of its arm as well... I mean... a pokemon that "moves continents"... :P

Thank you Mirre! Hehe, it's quite full of stuff, yeah! Regarding palette, it's the original pokemon GSC one (black, greens, browns and blues), but I added two colors on the general tilesets and a few more colors for the sprites! Yeah I noticed I used a few more colors than inteded for trainer and pokemon sprites around, so I lost count of colors at a certain point, but I was aiming at 16 for the background (I think it's 18 now!) and 8 more for sprites. :'P
Thank you for noticing, corrected it on the post! :'>
 

Yes indeed! Every Unown is there. Some of them are easier to spot than others, and there's also a very S-pecial one that is more difficult to see. Tehehe. Q is a pesky one as well.

In case you want to delve into the research more, you may also find seven shiny pokemon... maybe an eighth one!

Hehe! Thanks! The funny thing about them, is that I'm just organizing them in a different way (ramps, mostly) than the original, but each color there is from the original palette library of the game!

Thank you StevenM, your comment absolutely made my day. I think you pointed out some of my dearest factors in pixel art and environment, such as the "dialectic" between tiled structure and variation. I think there's definitely something I need from both the structure and the freedom from it, and environment is definitely the field to better convey that research.
The microspace you're mentioning, as well, is something I deeply care for: from windows to dithering in shadows, the challenge resides in finding a balance between detail, readability and resource handling. I find that even there the use of tiles and repetition/variation helps conveying a "bigger picture" with its "density" of pixels, without losing a general focus. Of course the side effect of all I'm saying is that my pieces kind of require some calm and don't really convey a first impression and it's more like "Okay, I need some time to see the different parts". I'm really glad, anyways, that lots of people like you find that time for me (and for themselves) and get a bit lost in detail! Regarding anecdotes, for this specific piece I tried to fully understand what my memory of the original game was, rather than seeing and adapting the Nintendo DS remakes, which had an iconic take on the autumn trees for example. So I ended up thinking a lot about my personal Ecruteak, rather than the way it was intended, then I had to find another balance between my imagination and a traditional setting. Making the grove for the Burned Tower was kind of a response to my need of a more mysteryous place that could still fit in the general urban space, and Japan is full of examples like that! The very same process was applied to the Gym, which needed a differently characterized space, so the little secluded graveyard with the wisteria trees at the perimeter. So yeah, I try to work a lot on this kind of balance between memory and fantasy, tradition, scale and detail and so on!

Thank you Drea! I'm really happy to hear that, as I definitely feel like spriting is my weakest point in pixel art; retro palettes and small sizes somehow help me, but I'd love to tackle bigger subjects in the future!

Definitely my favourite legendary from the trio! :')

The downside of grass variation is that I often overdo it and everything becomes unreadable! Technically this is not only one of my largest pictures, but also the one with the highest color count, especially with moving animations of the water and reflection summing up! But, yeah, I still try to keep every element at 4 color count (+ eventual transparency) so that the final piece is rich, but also cohesive! :')

Thank you so much beetleking! I always try to enliven my locations as much as possible, especially if I have to deal with natural settings that kind of go against my notorious "tileset mindset"! :'>

I initially wanted to animate reeds too, but the piece kind of became too hard to read and scrapped the idea!

I absolutely love the colors and tilework! The shop detail with the shopkeeper is just too much fun, not to mention the ninja in the back alley! I'd probably add some neat shadows for the tall structures (Walls and houses), but it's really fun as it is!

Thank you WreX! Yeah, I was struggling a bit with water, as the coastline animation required a bit of effort; Just one color (without the gradient) felt unfinished and strange and this was the most appealing solution I found, but I'll be trying something different for sure next time!

Thank you! Sorry for the long wait, but the last few months were really busy!

Thank you so much Elk, it means the world coming from you! It's quite incredible to read that as you are (and always have been) a huge inspiration for me. I started learning / doing pixel art on the web more than ten years ago. I clearly remember your Deathwing being one of those pivotal moments of my experience as a beginner artist back in the day!

Thank you Sekai! I always try to keep in mind old limitations without really sticking to them. Basically it just translates to color limitations nowadays!