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[DireLogomachist]

Dang, JWK, that palette cutting technique is amazing!

Palette selection has always confused the hell out of me. I'll need to give this a go next time I try to art.

[JWK5]

IMO, despite the point about harmonising colours, the background in Sonic is still way too shouty and saturated and not at all easy on my eyes, even if the readability and palette is better. I still prefer a toned down background.

Not to get too off topic, but honestly so do I. I think the original was designed to that you can easily pick things out at high speeds due to the extreme contrast however I'd have preferred something more like this:



My main point with it was even despite the boldness of the colors it is still coherent due to the colors harmonizing, you can still make sense of what the background is representing and your eye can still track across it well.

Dang, JWK, that palette cutting technique is amazing!

Palette selection has always confused the hell out of me. I'll need to give this a go next time I try to art.

Yeah, it can work wonders on getting you out of a color rut since it limits you to a certain set of colors but at the same time almost guarantees color harmony.

[oahda]

My main point with it was even despite the boldness of the colors it is still coherent due to the colors harmonizing, you can still make sense of what the background is representing and your eye can still track across it well.

Yeah, yeah, I got that. c:

[Samaras-Sama]

Ok, original poster here:

Here's the beautiful result of harmonious colors for sprites:



Here's the horrible result of harmonious colors for the background:



JWK5 has helped me so much in the past!

Normally I would make any change told to me, and i have. But if any of you visit my devlog (just for a moment), you'll see complaints of people who are fans of my game (despite how small and humble it currently is) all trying to get me to undo the various changes people on these Art threads have suggested me to make to my sprites and my art.

These are people who actually like my style, and they are telling me that they don't like how my art style is changing. I'm changing it mainly because of the people on this website who continue to say things look terrible unless i do it their way.

I'm getting frustrated with listening to people who tell me to change things, because they're not telling me to change the right things. No I'm not saying that color isn't the problem. I'm saying that you don't like my background, and you're telling me to change the color, when you mainly just don't like the background.

My game will end up looking like something THEY would want to make, and like the majority of the "retro-styled" indie games that mimic the strict design rules set by other best-selling indie games on this website that were made using those very same restrictive design rules. This is literally what some people who are following my project are warning me about after seeing the gradual changes I've made so far.

Now I'm sorry if this comes off as bossy or aggressive, but until someone literally shows me a better use of the colors on the background that I have without literally changing any of the background, I'll stand by everything that I believe that your problem is simply with my background. It proven wrong (If someone can actually show me a better use of color for the background without changing it) I'll go back on everything I just said. I honestly think the problem is just that you don't like my background. Poor me!

What I'm trying to say is, this is becoming more of a style preference thing than a necessity thing. I'm happy with feedback, and I love when people give me advice that helps me improve, and I'm not looking for anyone to get offended by this post, but if you can actually help me, please do.

If you disagree with the background at a fundamental level but give me advice to change the color that's essentially a fool's errand because you simply just don't like the background, you're not helping but you're giving the appearance to others reading this thread that you are.

Anyway, thanks for the sprite help everyone!

[Polly]

I quite like what they did in Chaotix ... it's as if the backgrounds are slightly out of focus.



Foreground


Background

[Cobralad]

But if any of you visit my devlog (just for a moment), you'll see complaints of people who are fans of my game (despite how small and humble it currently is) all trying to get me to undo the various changes people on these Art threads have suggested me to make to my sprites and my art.

i just checked last two pages, theres only one person who offers really vague opinion.
You are confused, its ok. I learned art 9 years and im still mediocre, and i appreciate my more earlier art for its energy and creativity, but its painful to look at.
I started doing color wheel infographic thing before jfk, but gave up. Its more complex than just wheel patterns, maybe you should take a week off and then play the game.
Main issue now is readability, background is brighter than characters. Previous issue were muddy colors that just make everything look dissonant. Right now that ramp reads as platform for a first time players.
Also remember that in shadow colors move towards the opposite color spectral wheel, thats just a tip.

[Samaras-Sama]

But if any of you visit my devlog (just for a moment), you'll see complaints of people who are fans of my game (despite how small and humble it currently is) all trying to get me to undo the various changes people on these Art threads have suggested me to make to my sprites and my art.

i just checked last two pages, theres only one person who offers really vague opinion.
You are confused, its ok. I learned art 9 years and im still mediocre, and i appreciate my more earlier art for its energy and creativity, but its painful to look at.
I started doing color wheel infographic thing before jfk, but gave up. Its more complex than just wheel patterns, maybe you should take a week off and then play the game.
Main issue now is readability, background is brighter than characters. Previous issue were muddy colors that just make everything look dissonant. Right now that ramp reads as platform for a first time players.
Also remember that in shadow colors move towards the opposite color spectral wheel, thats just a tip.

Sigh!

1. Don't tell me that I'm confused. The only thing that's making me appear confused are the constant promises of people improving things for me while not sending me on a good path. If you really read the devlog you would have seen why.

2. Stop projecting.

There's a huge difference between relating to someone, and projecting. I really dislike when people project.

3. Let me pull some comments from the devlog that you missed:

Honestly, I like the initial iterations of your character designs better than the version 2 edits. Sure, your technique needs a bit of work to knock out the "jitter", but overall the essence of your characters appears stronger in version 1.

Person #1 absolute8

However I've noticed that Joule hasn't been showing as strong of a personality as he did in older artwork. While the older art was a work in progress, I liked the fact that just looking at his expressions could give you an idea of the kind of person he is.

Person #2 Kryptot7

Anyway, I don't intent to be standoffish or defensive. Don't take anything I just said offensively. I received the sprite help I needed. Anything else that conflicts with my art direction isn't confusing me, it's just superfluous. I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going with my art, and I'm at the point of frustration where I'm ready to just stop listening to any further comments on the background. Thanks!

EDIT:

In the future for anyone who responds to a help-thread like this one, if you have advice to give the OP, and you're in a position to give advice, please actually give them advice. Advice would be a specific means to improve what you have an issue with.  (Don't just post a tutorial or a screenshot, because c'mon people, you can say those aren't specific, but those aren't specific.)

If you don't want to be bothered giving advice at that level, then you're not  helping. I find that on the internet, everyone becomes an expert at everything and can give advice.

Few users online actually give quality advice.

Anyway please don't take offense to me. Have a nice day and I hope to see the rest of you on other threads!

Let's all just smile and walk our separate ways, I love you all :3

[JWK5]

I understand this stuff is frustrating and exhausting, but accept that it comes with progress. You are definitely confused because you did not implement anything presented to you correctly at all. That's okay, though, it took me many days of bashing my head against the artistic wall before anything I am sharing with you now made sense to me at all. I get that it is hard and I don't blame you for being upset, and trust me when I say art is going to make you upset many more times in the future (as it does for me and just about any other artist I know), but just understand that confusion is the battleground of learning and you have to fight that battle if you want to learn a new skill. Nobody is going to look at you like a failed artist for being confused or not knowing, but the minute you start blaming people for it that is when you really do start to look like a failure, that is when you are closing your mind and stop learning. We all have our moments of that, but I hope yours has passed and you are ready to learn again.

And please, please, don't try and hide in the whole "style" cop out, style does not equal skill and technique (but skill and technique can definitely improve style). Style without skill and technique looks like this:



So I am going to give this another shot. In the following example I am not saying you have to use the color scheme I did I am just giving it as an example. I know it is not an exact replication of your scene but I had only a few minutes to work with this morning so I rushed it a bit and just drew it fast with the paint brush in MS Paint rather than pixel-by-pixel. The main takeaway here is balancing the colors (so there is no unintended clashing) and layering the colors (so that you get a sense of distance and it is easier on the eyes).



P.S: If I "didn't like" your background, if I didn't see any value in it, why would I bother helping you improve it?

[ydobemos]

I'm no art expert, but in general the initial scene seems a little too busy and lacks depth. In real life depth perception is helped by 3D movement, but if that is not perceptible then haze, fog, darkness also contribute to help our brain tell what is further away and what is closer.
 
I think your backgrounds could use some more of that - like, if this scene is taking place at night the further something is the darker it should be, unless lit by something (and even then lose some brightness with distance).

I made a slightly extreme (and very lazy) example here:



Not going to mask each object, but just to give an idea - you would have the arch somewhere between background intensity and front and the front objects, of course at full intensity. The animated bright lights should stay, I just didn't feel like drawing all of them back in. Just a suggestion.

As a second point - I don't think that all art necessarily needs to adhere to color harmonies, the real world doesn't either. So if you really like a color scheme - why not. Although it does help to somewhat limit the amount of colors so instead of color scheme it becomes color salad. One thing that could also help here would be some outlines, like in your signature artwork - they make your active objects pop on the background. Here I (once again lazily) added 25, 50 and 75% darker outlines. Looks like the middle one isn't half bad. Depending on what you are using to make this this could be done with a shader on the entire front layer for a neat look.

[Jad]

I say keep bashing your head against the garish bright sonic color wall. Make it work by continuous experimentation.

Sonic's Emerald/Green Hill Zones are supposed to be all about the bright colors of a grassy sunny day so everything is basically screaming with color. If you look at some later stages from the games you'll see there's a bit more unsaturated colors intermingling with the other colors.

Also looking at Emerald Hill Zone, you can see it basically has 3 color identities: Super dark saturated blue sky, slime green and orange-brown soil.

I think you should try to decrease the amount of color identities in your BG. I'd recommend getting rid of the green.

This thread has a bunch of feedback I don't agree with a lot. It feels like somebody bringing in a grind core track for critique and people saying 'it's loud and I don't like that the singer's screaming, listen to this nice pop track, note how the singer actually sings with notes? You should do that - it's correct according to Music Theory'.

Basically, if you don't think Sonic the Hedgehog looks good, you are free to offer everything you know on color theory but don't be surprised if the response is 'I think I'll keep trying to achieve Sonic, actually'.

Speaking of Sonic and how to Achieve it:

Sonic has a lot of clashing-looking color identities. Look at Chemical Plant zone - it's kind of crazy, it's got a brown-orange background with a second bg layer which is olive-colored. The stage itself is mainly gray (100% neutral gray at that) with bright yellow and 100% blue colors. How does this work? (excepting the answer 'it doesn't and I don't like it' (which I don't think))

One thing: Every color conveys something and appeals to the modern human mind and it's associations. The black-yellow 'warning' pattern plus gray metal screams industrial. The chemical blue implies ... chemical. So everything in the foreground says 'chemical plant', which is great for its purpose.

On top of that, the background layers each have only a color identity each, which is great since the foreground already is loaded with stuff. In addition both layers have colors reminiscent of street lights in the 90s.

Sonic tends to abstract its art a lot and take advantage of the tiled and pixeled nature of its graphics. Thus repeating patterns tend to cover the walls and natural elements (grass, trees) tend towards being geometrical rather than natural looking.

As so much of the appeal of Sonic art (to me!) lies in how it uses the digital artificial feel of pixeled tiles to its advantage, I feel like broad-strokes feeling out the palette might not be the best way to keep stomping - making tiles and placing them as a way of making concept art might be better than freehand-drawing at this point.

Some more critique on the actual art in question:

I feel like the background isn't lacking in color cohesiveness as much as it's lacking light and shading coordination. If it's night-time most light would likely be artificial and this light up high buildings from the bottom up, tall things being darker the higher they stretch. Figuring out where to put the shades so that they appear to have a shape cohesive with the lighting conditions is sure to elevate your bg to the level you like.

Also I think you should do some color separation between foreground and bg. I think the best candidate would be magenta - having it only in the foreground and never the back would help the eye to clearly see what's in the front and what isn't.

.. That's a lot of unsorted thoughts from me. Make of it what you will. Cheers

[JWK5]

Sonic has a lot of clashing-looking color identities. Look at Chemical Plant zone - it's kind of crazy, it's got a brown-orange background with a second bg layer which is olive-colored. The stage itself is mainly gray (100% neutral gray at that) with bright yellow and 100% blue colors. How does this work? (excepting the answer 'it doesn't and I don't like it' (which I don't think))

It works because of color theory.

Also looking at Emerald Hill Zone, you can see it basically has 3 color identities: Super dark saturated blue sky, slime green and orange-brown soil.

As for Emerald Hill, you can see on page 1 of this thread I already showed it follows an "analogous scheme".

This thread has a bunch of feedback I don't agree with a lot. It feels like somebody bringing in a grind core track for critique and people saying 'it's loud and I don't like that the singer's screaming, listen to this nice pop track, note how the singer actually sings with notes? You should do that - it's correct according to Music Theory'.

It's more like "Instead of just blindly plucking strings you should actually learn to play guitar so that you understand how to produce the sounds you want."

Even if he wants to use garish, muddy colors that'd be fine but he should still know how to put them together coherently.

[Samaras-Sama]

I stand corrected:

[JWK5]

Looking much better!

[Cobralad]

ive just noticed those rings. When someone gonna actually play it, problem gonna be more noticeable. background was too active even on jwk edit.
Those blinking domes i think should be removed entirely or reduced severily.

[Woseseltops]

Wow, big improvement Oekaki-Sama, well done. It's not easy to swallow all the critique, but you used it to your advantage.

If you can handle some more: I still feel that the background is too bright in comparison with the foreground items. Making it darker or more saturated would be easier on the eyes, and also draws attention to the correct things. An example picture, I didn't include any bright foreground things:

[eyeliner]

I'm just a looker, but from my mediocre standpoint, how about trying to reduce the color range?
I feel there's a bit to  many reds and blues in the background?

My edit, justso you can laugh:

[Samaras-Sama]

ive just noticed those rings. When someone gonna actually play it, problem gonna be more noticeable. background was too active even on jwk edit.
Those blinking domes i think should be removed entirely or reduced severily.

Done. Also, how do you propose I change the rings? These colors are the best for contrast.

I'm just a looker, but from my mediocre standpoint, how about trying to reduce the color range?
I feel there's a bit to  many reds and blues in the background?

My edit, justso you can laugh:

looks nice



Thanks for the help guys :3

Some of the early stuff on this thread is so bad I don't even want to look at it