Feedback please :D

Hello i'm new to making game's i've always dreamed about creating 2D pixel game . This is just a background for now. What i need from you guy's is a quick look at the background, its not finished and if you have any suggestions just tell me what im doing wrong or some idea's, thanks.
if you gonna hate my background just write it...

 

The image is too small to see. Make it bigger!

also, in general, usually art has some goal. something you are trying to communicate. Letting us know what the goal is will help us give better feedback compared to a general "is muh art crap or wut?"

 

I'll be honest, I did a WHOLE lot of work with a top to bottom critique, editing the whole thing, but there's a pretty big problem here.

100x50 is a ridiculously small resolution. It's very hard to draw any amount of detail out of that small resolution. To put things into perspective, the original Game Boy had a resolution of 160x144. That's 23040 pixels compared to your 5000. That's a prohibitively small canvas to work with. Here's your image blown up 4x:



But to add to that, the art itself has a lot of problems. The clouds look like little more that splotches, while the castle and mountain I can only really identify as either of those things because they have a really vague shape to them. I've redrawn the image at 160x144 in monochrome to kinda hammer home my Game Boy point.



The thing about pixel art is that you have to make a lot out of very little. This image contains four shades of green and that's it, but it's also (imo) considerably more readable. Let's work from the top down:

The first thing I focused on were the clouds, since they were kind of a hot mess if I'm being real. The original looked like they may have been altocumulous, but because the resolution was so low, it was hard to tell. What I did instead was replace them with pretty standard cumulonimbus ones, since they're very fluffy, but also have a clearly defined shape. I also gave them a bit of a trail, showing them blowing in the wind and breaking apart to give a sense of movement to the scene. Take note of the inside of the clouds, where slightly darker dithering is being used to help build out the shape facing the viewer. This helps give them a sense of depth and a little bit of lighting, but it doesn't overpower the rest of the image.

Next, I had to do something about the mountain. There was no real sense of direction to any of it, but since it had a river, I assumed it was important. I focused on the river first, giving it a staggered path down, which also helped show the shape of the mountain itself. Again, there's some dithering here, but this is mostly just lines with a single gap between them. The primary function here was to help show the rocky texture of the mountain. Texture is extremely important in pixel art. Never forget this. Finally, I added white light peaks and a second bit of mountain in the back. Again, this is for depth.

Next, uh... I didn't actually know what was up with the white in the background, so what I did was interpret it as a sort of low hanging, very misty fog. Note that there is, again, some horizontal dithering, but the contrast is much higher. This gives the impression that it's not a solid mass of white, but instead something a little more ethereal. The lines cut right through and show the dark green background, but because the lines are so tightly packed, it makes them seem like a transparent effect.

The fortress took a bit more work than I'd like to admit, but I think I captured the general essence of it. Take note of the way that you can make out the cylindrical shape. I accomplished this by making the bricks gradually smaller as they get to the side and only shading the middle brick of the central turret all the way around. Again, this is the help give depth to the scene. I made sure to keep the area where you can see through to the background from the original, but gave it an arch shape. I also doubled the amount of flags, mostly as a personal touch. Take note of them as well. They aren't perfectly rectangular, but instead fall to the side a bit.

The underground section... I had no idea what you were going for there. I assumed the giant mass of white was some sort of ore deposit or something, so I just turned that into a sort of lumpy, rock-like structure. Since it was a whole unit in the image, I broke its shape up a bit and kind of worked under the impression it was maybe gold or silver. The limited resolution meant I had to keep the chunks pretty large, but to give them the impression of a shimmering ore, I added a faint, light outline around it. To the right you can see that I interpreted the grey bits as stone and, as such, gave them pretty simple geometric shapes and a very rigid, uniform lighting pattern to them.

Finally, I added some dithering (of course I did, I've done that like a dozen times now :v) to the dirt to make it look like it's not a solid mass. This makes the fact you can see the ore and stone feel a bit more "real" rather than them just being suspended there.

tl;dr: your working resolution is much too low to the point where it's going to be dramatically affecting readability. Keep texture, shape, and lighting in mind whenever you're drawing something made of an actual material. If something is the focal point of an image, make sure it is either specifically lit or has more high-contrast detail.

 

I'd be interested to see a sped up video of your work. Probably would help OP as well.

 

Aside from @Murgilod 's very thorough reply. (great pixel art, by the way, @Murgilod )

The first question I'd ask with this scene - "what is the purpose of this image"? I mean, if it is a game screen, whom are you going to control? With the scale you selected, a human would be two pixels tall in this screen. Are you controlling the castle? Some monster, maybe? Then it would make sense, maybe.

((Opinion.

Quite a lot can be achieved by going through following steps:

1. "Make a palette"
2. "Block out objects using flat colors so the silhouette looks right"
3. "Add lighting and detail"
4. "Keep strategically adding lighter/darker pixels till it looks right".

I mean it is pixel art with 4bit pallete and low resolution. The beauty of this kind of medium is that you don't have that many choices in the first place, and low resolution grid allows you to experiment with visuals (by adding/removing pixelrs here and there) withotu accidentally wrecking the whole thing.

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Related:

Spoiler

 

A nice exercise I saw some concept artist do on youtube was to take thumbnail sized squares and paint black/white landscapes in them. Nothing but a few shapes basically. Darker in the foreground, lighter as you move away. Is a good way to realize how much of the image is reliant on just value and composition. I think if you can make some readable, attractive little thumbnails like that, you'll get the point and be able to take that mindset into bit-type graphics.

 

Damn dude, that's sick work. I can't believe you did that whole thing for a forum post.

 

And I can't believe she pulled it off in that short of a time frame.

 

no problem but first i need to finish it

 

what should i do first ? for example a game menu background, characters idk

 

ANYTHING.

The order doesn't matter. Start working, making the game, test it, fix things that don't work.

Usually, however, people start with a gameplay prototype where you test mechanics but art isn't in yet. Meaning you'd be controlling a walking cube. That allows developer to test the gameplay first without investing into art.

 

aight, thanks and 1 thing more i need formats in pixels for
*Background (menu)
*Background (game)
*Characters
*Weapons
*Items