#infinitePyramid

 There once was a project dubbed 'Infinite Pyramid' that should have featured Bilou in a procedurally-generated pyramid. Just like "nuts'n'bolts", it is no longer seriously considered since the introduction of "Bilou Dreamlands", but I have kept tagging some tweets #InifinitePyramid, especially when it came to others' pixelart to study. It's now time I actually study some of them a bit more.

"sunset in a bottle" by Chrysoperla2. I like the overall aesthetic of the bottle and the color raster for the golden part works quite well. Possibly the curvy style is more "arabian nights" than truly egypt, but I don't think I should care too much about that.

The 'ramp' for the shady part is replaced by small and smaller islands of intermediate shade, which makes nice clusters. the two lightest shades are almost always together, the second-brighter being rarely seen alone unless in the darker parts of the object that get not enough light to show the full ramp.

A quick overlap test with my existing tileset shows however that these golden tints look very close to the tints I picked for the rocks, and using them instead of my yellow ramp for the mummy's crowns doesn't work as is. I'll have to find something in-between Chrysoperla and my current colors to improve.

The 'small' jewelish pot at the left of Nerkin's Egyptian scene seems to blend better into my own mock up.

Greenish creature by CJJammies

Pretty effective shape, which could work pretty well as a reference for my crocodilish monster . At least the colors blend fairly well with my current tileset.

I note how we mostly either use the top-3 colors of the ramp (areas in the light) or the bottom-three (areas in the shadow, like the head), but rarely the middle-three as main colors.

The textureless style has some charm, but I will likely try and put some 1-pixel-wide strokes to suggest scales on my own character.

I'll have to return on the eye later on. The shading work here is brilliant. It still sticks to 5-colors-ramps if we consider that the pupil is "another color" than the rest of the eye.

That could have been all, but Master Henk has recently published a mockup of Shantae palace (3DS) together with a full tileset for that area. There's so much to study in here, and unfortunately, JPEG compression has made it nearly impossible to identify precisely which and how many colors Henk has been using. Yet, quick preview in my mockup suggests the color could blend in nicely. The pillar seems compatible with Egyptian style enough to provide an extra reference. The stonework is awesome as well, including almost all the little tricks I've seen in others with just the right amount of stylization. Maybe it's not really appropriate for plain pyramid walls, but something alike could surely work deeper under the ground.

And then, there had been an interesting sarcophage by Juanito Medinart, but it doesn't seem to blend so well... It might still be an interesting reference for style or so, but not as pixels.