Far From Home

EDIT 20/02 - Altered the proportions because Katanga has stumpy legs, and added a tail.

I figured I needed a new icon, so here it is

Far From Home is a combination of wanting to try and sprite Katanga in a smaller scale and wanting to do some more environment-based pixel art. I opted to create a scene in which Katanga is looking back at his island home. While I did reboot his story a lot, the island he grew up on has remained constant, and I wanted to capture a feeling of beauty, but also of Katanga's distance from everything he was accustomed to.

In terms of spriting, I used a few cool techniques to shade the rocks, sand and water. Most of which were on a Deviantart tutorial which has since been stored, so I played it by ear and tried to capture a similar idea. I also aimed to to use as little black as I could, and I think the piece has benefitted a lot from it. I also used far less dithering than I did in my previous "Winter" icon purely because it was a bit cheap. I did use it on the sky but that was to reduce the palette which is pretty substantial as is.

So yeah I'm fairly proud of it. Critique is welcome on this one