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[JLJac]

Is that something you are working on? I thought you were deadly afraid of side projects :D

I really like the art style though, those toned down colors are amazing!

[Mr Dumle]

One thing that's helped me a lot is realizing that colors are very relative.

That's the problem with games though. You may want something to always "pop out" no matter what background. (ie. Player is red and pops out in forest level but not in the lava level.)

[The-Imp]

Why do I love that so much?

[tylerjhutchison]

The relative color theories mentioned by everyone here are really excellent pointers and great advice at making things POP when you need them.

I am not a very accomplished spriter, I am really more of a water color/ oil painter.  But I think I still might have some useful advice for picking highlights and shading. 

For most general shading work, I like to create a transparent wash in a dark gray or sepia (gray brown) or dark brown... or sometimes a dark blue.  When I work digitally I replicate this by futzing with the opacity level on the layer, It is usually around 30% to 40%  Drop the shadow layer on top of a flat color layer and allow it to tint your colors into their shadow tones.  You should pick one color for your shadows and stick with it!!   Stick with it for all colors in a level.  For characters I would use the dark gray for shading, it will hopefully be neutral when jumping to a level that may have a different color palette.

I do something fairly similar with highlights,  I tend to pick pure white and then make it very transparent

Also: http://studiochalkboard.evansville.edu/s-chiaro.html
Learn it; love it; like it; good.    I will have about 2-3 shadow layers that are all at about 10-15% opacity, then the parts that overlap will pick up as being the darker shadows.  I find that it is really nice to keep all of my shadows modular, because they can be applied and swapped onto multiple sprites.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

One theory I like is the theory that color balance is basically using geometric shapes on the color wheel: in other words, form a triangle on the color wheel, equilateral, and make those three your dominant colors. The colors will now be fairly well-balanced, because they'll contrast well, because they're each exactly equal in distance from the two other colors. You can then make slight variations of those three colors: vary their luminosity and their saturation, and maybe their hue a little (but only very slightly), and then use that palette for that area. Then use a different triangle for a different area.

After you know the three dominant color ranges, you focus on one and use the other two for contrast. Literally fill around 60%-80% of the screen with the dominant color range, and the other colors together fill up the rest. It looks nice with that ratio in my experience.

Theories like that will only take you so far, though, it's best to go by eye. But theories like that can get you started.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

To show how that theory applies in action, take a look at the screenshot someone else posted, above:



Notice that there's blue, green, and pink, and that's about it. (white and black don't count). Those three colors are approximately equal distance from each other on the color wheel (blue and green are a bit closer to each other then red though). Also notice that there's a ton of blue, some green, and very little pink. Blue dominates, the others are used for contrast.