Why is my character lost in the background?

Question

I am designing and developing a 2D-platformer and I'm having trouble with the look and feel of the game. The game is about an inventor who is kidnapped for warfare. Theme: Childish but sad.

There are three other layers: the blue cracked sky, the pillars, doodads (like the missile) and the tiles.

(The hairy guy in the center is the protagonist.)

What should be changed to make the character stand out?

What should be the palette of the tiles, the font, and the background to make the character the center of attention?

What colors should be there revolving around the character and the theme?

Edit:

This is the revised color palette. Should've studied color theory before I went drawing like crazy.

Answer 1

How to make something stand out? Contrast. Easiest way is to use dark vs. bright or opposing colors like red and green.

The issue you are having is that your caracter also blends with the tiles, while the background is rich in color. Which makes us look at the background first. Basically, look at any similar game, you will see that background and foreground are seperated. And most often, the background will fade out which also adds the illusion of depth. Look at this example, the foreground is rich and the background fades gradually away. Then there is also complexity, complex and detailed characters and boxier backgrounds. All this draws the focus on the mai character, which is exactly what you are asking.

So, I would either reverse your palette, go light and grayish in the back, or darken your background to make it less "pop out". It's called background for a reason.

Answer 2

Looks like a case of too much contrast. In photoshop/gimp/whatever, try looking at a portion of the green things, and a sample of the cracked sky, the character etc. Look at the histograms of these. They each span a broad range of values, black or near black to white or near white.

Objects and background are easier for the eye to separate when their ranges of values don't overlap, or overlap a little. A light object with moderately contrasty detail will sit nicely in front of an all dark low-contrast background, and visa versa. But a medium value contrasty object over a medium value less contrasty background won't work so well, and never mind when foreground and background are both contrasty.

In your sample image, try repainting the green fuzzypuffs to be all somewhat lighter, darker. This will help, but this isn't the main problem. The tiles are very harshly contrasting. You want them visually in front, of course, but their very light texture with absolute black outlining draws visual attention away from all else, so your main character and the background tend to recede together in unimportance. These are not unimportant to our conscious minds, but at some level of visual processing in our eye/brain system, the relation of importance to object is lost.

Besides non-overlapping ranges of values and generally moderating contrast ranges, you can try well-separated ranges of color - bright red object over a watery blue/green background, for instance. Mario in KMSTR's linked-to image stands out by being saturated red, as well as being darker (not dark, just darker) than the surroundings.

The long-term general solution: take some informal art classes. Even experienced computer graphics experts can benefit from a bit of painting or charcoal drawing.

Answer 3

I think that maybe you should add a little contrast. To me it seems you have too many analogous colors http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-theory-intro.htm If you want it to have more of a childish feel I think you should go for primary colors.