Area 5 Volcano Art

Area 5 artwork donzo. The way to the surface leads through a volcano. What a massive inconvenience for the player. Got some big rooms with several parallax layers going, along with some lava ember particle effects floating up off the pools. A couple backgrounds are animated with glowing lava cracks. Not much but it helps make spaces feel more alive when there is some extra pieces moving around in it.

I have to go back through the areas I've made and see if I can come up with some animated background objects to plug in. I'm thinking about working on getting the crystals in Area 3 to flicker when the camera is moving. Would definitely be a cool effect, but it would be tough to get it to look right. That has been one of the more tricky aspects of doing all this artwork. I'll draw all these different objects and drop them in the stage, but they won't often look like they fit right, and I end up having to play around with the tint and contrast/brightness until it looks right. Basically imagining how light would reflect off of everything, and where sources of light are coming from. A skill I am struggling to develop.
 

Pixel art also comes with the decision about the pallet size I want to use for everything. I've heard of purists who feel like the pallet should be limited to what was available in the 8, 16, or 32 bit eras. I understand where that comes from, and have an appreciation for pixel art that looks amazing while sticking to just a handful of colors.  My approach is usually to set a pallet for whatever I'm drawing, like 4 shades of orange for a rock tile. I'll draw the whole thing up and plug it into a level, but if I feel like a little extra shading or highlighting will help the object fit in, I'll use the dodge/burn tool to cheat out of those original colors a little bit. To me the spirit of pixel art is more about making a 8x8 sprite look like a person reaching down to tie their shoes. Are you seeing enough in those 64 pixels to have your mind fill in the rest? Hopefully.