Hello everyone, I'm new to pixel art and wish to learn it for my own game, like many others. And I started to search for the tutorials and then found PJ. I think the weekly challenge here is a good thing for me to practice.

The challenge of this week is about 'Happy Ending'. The first scene crossed my mind is: two old people, who were our hero and heroine, are walking down a boulevard in autumn. The main color could be yellow/orange to represent both the warm weather and the age of the person. I think this scene is as common as the wedding scene of course.

However, since the Chinese New Year has passed just one week ago, I want to draw something Chinese.

So i tried to look for the Chinese love stories. Unfortunately, most of the famous ones are tragic. One of them is Butterfly Lovers. On the wikipedia, it is written "often regarded as the Chinese equivalent of Romeo and Juliet". But some people consider it as a good ending because the lovers became butterflies in the end and are never to be separated again.

And then I found some interesting Chinese paper arts and drew this:




In fact, since the figure is from paper art so the original is flat, i just have no idea how to color them. (In the first image I tried to use the color of traditional Chinese painting.)

I tried during the past few days but failed to figure it out. Does someone have some ideas?

I also drew another piece:



Also a flat one . I didn't use many shades because I still don't get the key of the colors....

I will be appreciated if you can give some advises.

PS: I think I've written too much. Thank you for reading to the end...

Sometimes threads won't get the feedback they deserve if there are multiple works posted. I'll focus on the Chinese couple.

These are pretty good really (another reason a thread might not get replies). For the red dot on chinaboy's head (and the red cheeks on both), I think the most furthest pixels from these clusters should be removed (e.g. on the red dot, the corners of this read shape: + need AA for the shape to look round, but the AA on the tips makes it look too sharp). Shading is a little inconsistent, it might be good to see just a little shading on the clothing since the faces are shaded (beneath the sleeves, inside the sleeves, on the underside of the sleeves- these areas would probably be darkest). Adding some darker colors to the bodies would also make the black outlines less jarring, right now they read pretty well on the heads but are a little stark on the clothing.

The butterfly lovers are pretty cool too, the design is nice. But be careful with dithering, it's really easy to over-dither and it usually isn't necessary to dither at all.