The past few days, I have been working hard on some concept art for my upcoming 2D physics-based platform game. I want to get a grip on the art style before moving on to the generation and level-creation. These are the first couple of concept art pieces I've finished:

As you can see, I'm going for a minimalistic look, although the colours are subject to change, depending on the storyline I go for.

The mechanics of this physics platform game resolve around a snowball. Rolling around would make you bigger and can help you break down or move obstacles. Being small, on the other hand would permit you to jump longer distances and to squeeze through narrow gaps. The first piece of concept art I posted got generally very good feedback ... until I posted it on Reddit and Imgur.

On the latter social networks, I didn't get any constructive feedback, with mostly [supposedly] trolls commenting with garbage and down-voting it. This contrasted a lot with the feedback I received both on a number of Facebook groups (dedicated to game developers) and [especially] on Twitter, where many commended the style. And this is the reason why I'm here.

I admit it was a bit tough to fathom that after the good feedback I received by game developers, the concept art was being trashed by others. I'm not sure whether those who trashed it were actually trolls or not, which demotivated me a little, I have to admit. I would love some constructive feedback about this concept art. What do you think about the style?

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Well, I don't think the contrast is high enough for it to be functional in a game. Specifically, you never want two white areas touching; instead you want either a bit of reflected sky color on the top of the snow, or you want a strong shadow on the bottom of the snowball. And you definitely don't want a white area in the background touching the white ground. I like the ground and the snow okay otherwise. The sky in general could use more content: clouds, stars, birdies, or at least a strong color gradient.

Yes, the contrast is something I'm working on - both between the background and the foreground, and between the snowball and the ground (very tricky).

I wrote a blog post detailing how I created the first piece of concept art for those interested. This includes the thought process involved to choose the right style for the game: http://nyphoon.com/creating-concept-art-for-winters-coming/#.UtQniPRDtps

The contrast should be more higher as it's very hard to lock onto objects and during gameplay it will be worse. Also anyone with impaired vision, will struggle to play in such environment.

Yes, as I replied higher above, I will be working on the contrast. Firstly, the background hills will have a dark hue, rather than a light one. This will make the snowball stand out against the background. What's more, I will be accentuating the shadow so that the snowball will also provide contrast with the snow. Think something like this:

I'm also toying with two other options. The first is to provide the option to adjust the shadow depth to suit the user. The second is to use a thin, slightly dark border (I'm thinking 1-2 pixels wide) with the snowball so that the snowball will always be visible.

It would really look much better and be easier to grasp visually if you would use one accent color in addition to your base color.

@sunandshadow, what exactly do you mean by accent color?

Here is what I mean by adding an accent color, in this case blue.

Well, I was initially going to use a single pallet, in this case red, so introducing a new color isn't on my agenda right now. However, I will probably introduce an accent color with the same hue on the snow itself - I believe that would work very well.