I don't know what i'm doing wrong--i think it's the colors, but it looks bad to my eyes. Any advice would be appriciated. Thanks

For most of this you don't seem to be choosing your light source or lighting conditions. So things have almost no shadows and look flat or unfinished.

You do have some shadow colors, but they are very sparsely used and are very similar to your "hit by light" color. So they generally aren't very visible.

At the very least I'd aim to describe my shapes with clear light and shadow colors and try to give a realistic light falling direction.

Your butter for example looks pretty decent because you have chosen which sides are hit by how much light. Whereas your sugar sacks have almost no shadows on them. And your glass jar tops with the patterns don't seem to have shadow around the lid rims.

You've also got some interesting shape variation in your Jam Jar contents with varying shape and location blobs. But your hay and berries are very uniform in shape, which isn't that exciting.

Edited by Iscalio - 31 March 2015 at 9:30am

I agree with what everyone has said so far, there are banding problems and shading issues in general, as well as the images appearing flat.

With that said, there is a simple, cartoony look to some of these sprites, like the colorful jars. They are actually really nice to look at and the style isn't necessarily "wrong" in any way. If you want flat cartoony images, so far you have achieved that.

Personally, I recommend you first work on color contrast before taking on shading issues. In the image below, the top two sprites of yours have contrasting colors and "pop" from the background, whereas the bottom two sprites have less contrast, so appear more "faded" and blend with the background. I have made edits to show the opposite effects for the box and bag of flour.



You can use low contrasting colors to give the faded look to background objects, and high contrasting colors to make the images pop more, it is up to you, but because these are all individual sprites, I imagine you would want the popping look to them more.

With that said, this is very good work. I can tell you are working with a small number of colors for each sprite, and are placing each pixel by hand basically. You have also made everything clearly readable. Even though the images are drawn simply, I can tell exactly what everything is supposed to be. And again, the jar sprites and fruits are very colorful and nice to look at, so good job!