Very little foliage for the size of the trunk. Try doubling the length of the branches and then let gravity take the leaves a bit lower than centered on them.

Currently the piece is quite flat, with no defined light source. Choose a source and stick to it. You can even draw lines from the source to the tree to keep yourself at it.

Think in shapes and look at the big picture rather than each small section. Sometimes it helps to blot out large areas and then refine.

You're already off to a good start. Good palette choices, and a good canvas size.

MUCH better already! I can also see your light source better in your leaves... it appears to be coming from right above... Its causing your trunk to look a little flat though. Here's a quick edit throwing the light to the side enough to affect the trunk:

*to be clear, I did not edit the leaves at all*

Now I'm not very good at trees myself, and with more practice we can both do much better, but now you can easily see where the light comes from.

I also highlighted where I think you should add a few leaves... I know all trees aren't symmetrical. but lets face it, our eyes are drawn to things like that and it can make an image feel unbalanced. Especially if there's nothing else in the frame.

as a side note, I love how you used the darker green to highlight where the trunk was under the leaves. It adds something to the picture. very nice.



*************actually... scratch my previous recommendation on adding leaves... your tree is perfectly balanced to add a swing on the right side. It'll bring the picture together and allow you to create a nice backdrop before you submit it to the gallery ********** /recommendation

Edited by StepDragon - 03 July 2013 at 8:35pm

I think if you varied the ramps of colors a bit, it could help. If that is a wheat field, the wheat would become less detailed as it gets farther from the viewer. Some of the colors seemed to be clashing with other colors, such as the reddish brown of the tree and the green of the grass.
Don't be afraid to go past what "color" you think things should be. Sky=blue. Grass=green. Etc.

And consistent detail in all of these objects make them seem very 2d.

Disregard some of the changes I made, if they make it look worse.


Edited by ParkerBabyDiaperCompany - 06 July 2013 at 1:05pm

Hi PBDC do you have any recommendations on how to change the ramps but still retain consistency? As the background has been added I had trouble preventing colour clashes without introducing a bucket load of new colours. Still not sure what is the best way to tackle this issue without making the image too busy. Interesting point on consistent detail making things flat. The wheat does become less detailed further back but its probably not noticeable enough.


The changes you made to the background are interesting StepDragon. I was trying to work with a fairly limited palette but I guess I have little choice but to introduce some more colours to separate the background.

I use Paint.NET for sprite work with a bunch of sprite related plugins. Unfortunately there is nothing there to control your palette so I only list the major colours to the side. So far minor deviation from the palette has been limited to the robin and the rope due to the strong amount of colour conflict along the fence (alot of competing browns). This new colours are somewhat separated from the rest of the palette which is far from ideal but it was the only solution I could think of to remove the clash.

Ive been messing around with GraphicsGale today and I can see the power of this feature.. this image though is already in PDN format with 25 layers so I will have to experiment with drastic colour changes with GG at the very end. I will have to try future projects with GG but this one is already too far rooted into PDN. It will take me longer to change the colours but its not impossible. If there was a description somewhere on how to handle colour conflict and how to improve my ramps I would probably go about fixing this first.

If I could get my palette theory under control this piece could look really good.

Edited by lordjosephdeburg - 06 July 2013 at 3:53pm

Yeah that would be great, I will clean up some of the layers. I havent made any changes have been busy with gale tutorials.

Really? Is there an admin I can contact about that?

I just PM my email instead

The wheat has been improved a lot. I think you can take out a lot of the distant texture and it would benefit.

How did you do those clouds? They don't look bad, but they stand out in the picture... they're a completely different style. they also look V.E.R.Y. real... yet not at all... I won't accuse anything, but doing anything other than drawing from scratch is generally frowned upon in pixel art. You may want to go back and fit it better to the subject of the picture... It also doesn't extend to the frame making it look more like an object rather than the background.

Contrast is a blessing and a curse... I like that the image is darker, but I think the contrast is too high.

The shading on the hills in the background is sloppy. It looks scribbled. It can be refined. Also the hard line betweek the ground and sky draws way too much attention.

You have a lot of foreground grass showing through your wheat... [look at the upper right corner behind the wheat] It throws off the balance of the picture like everything in the foreground is on a single floating platform in front of a picture... Fade that grass to the background hue so It doesn't stand out so much.

Also look at the very front of the wheat... it looks very sparse... If you look at a real wheat field, as soon as you get to the wheat the grass stops. Try filling those green holes with your darker color instead.

Source:

Forgive me if I was a bit harsh or not clear in my last post. It was right after getting home from work at 4am...

To be clear. I do like the sky, although I do think the clouds could be lighter rather than darker than the surrounding sky. However, I didn't know how you produced it. Given that this is a pixel art forum we try to stay as true as we can to pixel art. You can do some amazing things with just the paint, brush, and line tools, but it takes a lot of time and practice to do so. Using translucent overlays, copies (of other work/ sources), or automatic generation often regards the piece as 'not pixelart'.

Most of the time this will result in the piece being rejected from the gallery under either "Not Pixelart" or "Requires Revision". This isn't done because we think you can't do it right, but rather because we want to see this art form succeed in the future, and by offering a helping hand we can watch you do so much more than you would have originally thought. Just look back at your first post in the thread. You've made a lot of progress already, Keep it up!

As for the background not taking up the entire frame... Because the clouds are very noticable, yet do not go off any edge of the canvas, they appear out of place, or just sitting there. This draws too much attention to them, making the clouds look like their part of the foreground, rather than the background. Think of your picture like a photograph, everything extends beyond your image. Although there could be a lone cloud in the sky, its neither your subject matter, nor is it small enough to read that way.

Hows this? I have also cleaned up the palette



Edited by lordjosephdeburg - 21 July 2013 at 8:01am

haha actually the back hills are done. I dont see how to improve them without adding more detail and taking attention away from the main scene.

Do you mind circling the 'dark spots' Im not sure which you mean.

Yeah I can mess with contract a bit more. Originally this was to help the foreground stand out but now that I have fixed the palette I dont think this is really necessary.

Edited by lordjosephdeburg - 21 July 2013 at 10:04am

Thanks Xhukari! I will try a less harsh colour on top of SD feedback

Ahhh right. Yes I removed 70% of the dark spots already and was still unsure about what remained. I might remove them all to be honest as they are quite sharp in contrast and dont add much to the image.


haha I had a feeling you would like the colour count SD. At this point I am working with the image in GG to get the final colours and adjustments right. In the future I might swap to GG for a whole project, but now I use it in the later stages of my workflow and create project specific palettes in paint.NET

I like some of the minor changes you made, as you can see the mud marks underneath the tire are pretty tricky to get right. For whatever reason it seems to always be punching through the scene. Its one of the reasons I pushed the contrast up to help it blend better.


Edited by lordjosephdeburg - 22 July 2013 at 12:00pm

I think so. I just meant it as a general statement, by going through the different drafts of this piece I noticed brown seems to stand out harshly on green. Im not going to worry about it too much its just a curiosity.


I will put out one more draft and call this done. I think the feedback has become much more about minor tweaks and Im not learning as much so I should just finish off. I am eager to share this with the gallery and my friends! I think any of the guests viewing this thread are in for an interesting journey as there are dramatic improvements in most drafts and its actually been a lot of fun to make them.

SD you will obviously be getting an attribute. With your help I have learnt so much more from this piece it really surprised me. At first I was interested in some advice on making a half decent tree to use as a general game asset but now Im really invigored to create better pixel art as well now that I know what is possible.

I have written down a selection of challenging pieces to test and push my abilities further. I think you will like them..... I will definitely add them to the WIP section as I go.

p.s. SD I have added you to my buddies list, I notice this create a drop down option to message your buddies. This might be a work around to message me as your not typing the name in manually. Send me a message this way and I will respond if it works.

Edited by lordjosephdeburg - 22 July 2013 at 1:16pm