Hi,

We are in an era full of AI generated content. Your first piece is from 2024. Can you understand why I'm raising doubts? I'm not accusing you, but asking questions is necessary.
I'm sorry if this feel hostile, although I imagine these questions are not always welcome.

To be honest, this piece seems fine overall (also thank you for including the steps in your comment - you really should include than in the description), but this one doesn't (even if I find it pretty cool as an art piece - I definitively see the Meta baron references). To me, the flare on the bottom left, and the upper parts doesn't look natural at all. The flare looks exactly what you would get after applying color reduction. I find that very surprising to end up with this kind of effect when drawing by hand. And looking at the comments on this piece, it seems I'm not the only one thinking that.
In fact, this is mainly this Pilgrimage piece that made me suspicious. 

I was expecting two possible scenarios:

1. You draw first in digital painting, then apply some color reduction and "clean" things as you wish.
To me this would be fine if you also post the non PA image as a reference.

2. Original image is AI gen. And nowadays, this is unfortunately not something uncommon.
To me this would be fine too if included as a reference, and being transparent about using AI for reference material.

I would love to see your other step by steps (especially if you have the one for Pilgrimage). In fact, you should always include them. This is always useful to see the process of other artists. And this is usually a good way to clear all doubts.

For the reference, fair enough. To me this composition is quite cliché, but it is better to include more references than fewer. And if this image inspired you, who am I to judge.

Nice brouillons btw. Cool to see more French people here, even if I'm not really sure who commented previously.

Really, don't take this personally. As a community, we have to raise concerns. No one here want PJ to become full of AI slop. So no, please keep posting what you call your "miserable drawing".

I guess my previous comment is harsh, and I'm sorry about that. I'm probably frustrated by seeing all of this AI shit everywhere. And I'm afraid of seeing that in PJ too. Art is interesting when it's made by humans.
I prefer to see "miserable drawings" made by an human than nice images made by a machine.
 

And thank you for your answer. 

Why most of your pieces show artifacts usually caused by color reduction?

I clearly don't see any intend in most of the pixels placed in the center part of this piece for example.

Is your work based on automatic color reduction before procedeen to some modification / manual cleaning of regions of interest? If this is the case, why giving a reference that is barely a reference of anything except the concept of someone with a sword in front of a castle?

Beautiful scenery! This is so clean and smooth. Impressive pixel art skills you put on this.

Ooh, this one is beautiful.
The colors really works well, and the shinyness of the fruits is pretty cool!

This is an interesting style! I would have added more contrast between the castle and the background tho. It doesn't really show it off.

Oh wow that's a really cool underwater scene!

Too bad it's not animated :D

This is really a beautiful piece, but there is this single bright pixel that is annoying me a lot in the left edge of the image :'

Good pixeling. Thank you for posting the reference too! 

Beautiful. This mix of strong antialiasing on the outlines and low color count with strong dithering for shading is quite unusual but it works well!

Oh wow they are so cool!

This dithering is giving a nice atmosphere!

Maybe a little too noisy in the dark areas of the forest (on top left and top right).

That's some great pixeling on the face and the hair. I really love the curls.

Hello, I suggest you to take a look to pillow shading and banding.

This is a nice little sprite but you can greatly improve it with a few simple things.

Also, small tip: a flat surface always have an uniform color when illuminated by the sun. Except if shadows are projected, or if there are any ambiant occlusion of course. But for the top of the bricks, it's not the case, especially if the sun is high.

This little flame animation is really well done.

Cool atmosphere. Tho I'm not a big fan of the perfect symmetry for all of the composition. I would either keep only it for the rocks or the portal, but not both.

Haha, this small animation is adding a lot! Very nice.

Really cute sprites!

Oh yeah now I see it.

Yeah, that's true, but you have a lot of different "contrast" methods you can play with that are not directly related to the color count.
It can be contrast of details (less details in the background, so it's more readable), contrast of sharpness (not easy to do in pixel art, but basically trying to render something like if it was out of focus / blurry), contrast of saturation (not sure you have enough colors for that here)...

I really like the way the face "separates" / highlight from the rest.

Very cool style and palette!

My only issue with this piece is the lack of "contrast of details" / center of attention (not sure if you see what I mean).
My gaze is having a little trouble knowing what to look at. This is why it's usually recommended to not use the same level of details in the background/foreground than the "center piece" to highlight what you want. Or just to use more contrasted colors on each different plan.

Here a very rough example of what I mean, with the attention focused on the rocks/tree.

That's some cute style. Very nice!

Pretty cool icons! They all are very readable, maybe except the second of the last row (some damaged heart?)

Overall it's really cool. If I had to criticize something I would say the first two kings are not of the same quality (chara-design wise) than the rest.
Their design is a little bland and they look more like some general or adventurer than a king.
I particulary like the diamond cards and the queen of clubs!

Pretty cool design!