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Quick paintover to add more interest to the image.

The general mood of the image is good. However, there are some pretty serious problems.

The houses are of much higher resolution than the rest of the image. And those blurry transitions between grass/road, mountains/ground and mountains/sky really stick out to me. Look at how the edges are all sharp on the houses themselves; try to put that into the rest of the transitions as well.

Also, I see no real Points Of Interest in the image. Where are we supposed to be looking? What is the important part in which the action takes place? One of the most important aspects of a background is not only to PROVIDE a background, but also (at least usually) to lure the eyes of the viewer towards a certain point in the image; most often the area in which the action is gonna take place.

And do something about that sky...no night sky is simply blue like that.

To those of you going "the game is so-and-so old, it's not an important error, let it go, quit nitpicking" and so on and so forth, remember that this thread is not just meant  to whack the poor artist stuck with a 2 1/2 mhz spectrum machine and a brick-sized mouse to make this image so many years ago. It is also an excellent opportunity to look at a professional background and say "Hey, there's a problem here. How do we fix it in order to LEARN how to avoid the problem". I for one found this thread very interesting, and I appreciate the time people put into this.

The critics lounge is here for us improve as artists, and this is an excellent way of learning from mistakes, so we hopefully don't end up in the same situation ourselves.

So there.

Thanks, guys.
Personally I prefer them to have such strong eyebrows. Makes it so much easier to see the expression. Also, the white you put around the eye make him look horribly crosseyed...
And just for the record, it's not Guybrush though I do see the similarities.

As part of my "learning how to pixel"-process, i foun myself making a slew of characters from one the (pen and paper) roleplaying games I use to play, as if they were characters from an old nintendo-style RPG. I think they turned out quite alright.
Some of you may remember the two leftmost characters...I've pixelled them before when I was considering making a Monkey Island style adventure in the setting of the game. Those were of Monkey Island resolution though, which these clearly aren't...
But damn fun to make, especially their faces.

By his post, I doubt he's done yet, Spoof.
Other than that, looks good so far. But are you aware that the garage is bigger than the actual house?

Looks great. But with the quality of the backgrounds, I can't really see why you make it in VGA. Seems like a shame.

Looks really good. Only crits I can think of is:
1. Dirty the place up some more. Trash and paper in the corners. Smudges on the walls, not just grafitti. I feel that the wall itself should be more dirty.
2. Play a little with the lighting. As it is, all the lighting is very dull; there are no points of interest. Here's a suggestion: Make the whole room darker. Make light shine through the door where the character enters. Make it so light shines down in front of both the closed doors. Perhaps make some light come up from the stairs. And add some shadows behind objects.
3. I see a few perspective errors. Always, always, always use vanishing points if you are not completely sure what you're doing.

Oh, and welcome! Looks good, keep it up!

That's a good trick, Snarky. Didn't know that one. Thanks.

Have to go with Farlander...give it your best shot and upload it; we'll do our best to help you out.

Of all these, the photo composite at the bottom is the most succesful by far.  When making designs like these, always take special care to make the point of the image really stick out. As they are, all parts of the images are very bright and detailed, and are kinda distracting from what they are suppsoed to convey. Especially on logos, the old saying "less is more" is very very valid. Don't get too caught up in snazzy filters, ESPECIALLY Emboss and (gods forbid!) Lensflare.
On the 3D, i would say it looks good. The lighting is a little dull, the sword is kinda strange and her (at least to me) looks a little too big, but otherwise I like it. The pose is good, and the expression looks very fitting.

The first one is a mess sorry to say it. The one with just one bee is much more convincing - the motion in the first one is just too erratic.

Looking gorgeous. The background still has some problems matching with foreground (sharp, vectorish outlines vs. smudgyness), but all in all it looks great. You might want to add some details to the sand itself, make the dunes "sharp" at the top as in real desert, and generally work some texture into it, OR make it all match with background by vectorisationalizing (wow! what a word!) it more...

What Neil said, and:

Another good point for making backgrounds is getting some reference to study. Minimalist or not, knowing exactly how things look in real is the best starting point for making any kind of art.
Keep it up.

That's much better, Loominous. Thanks.
As for what happens next, I really like Darth's version...think I'll go with that. Thanks everybody, though.

Thanks for the comments, guys. As for the suggestions...uh...they're a bit more...silly...than I had in mind. I thought more something along the lines of a gangster movie...

I've just been drawing for as long as I can remember. I'm pretty new to pixeling, but so far it's not that different...a matter of training, as always.

Just more training. I wanted to make some animation today, and so I did. It is of course not finished, this is just the blocking out. And as I needed a background for him, I threw one together also.




Anyone wanna come up with happens next?

More training sprites...my apologies to everyone, I don't how the hell THIS happened!

Thanks, guys.
Here's a couple more. No animation today, hadn't the time.