Minotaur

Here's a piece I've been poking at for too long now, using the win3.x 16 col palette. Out of the systems palettes I've tried out, I think this one is the most difficult and abrasive. Packed with stupid. The approach I've taken is very unstructured, just going by general brightness and some vague idea of local color, and then trying to sort out the mess that appears.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this! Also any pointers to other eye-melting limited palettes would be great. I have a bunch of stuff done for the CGA palette but maybe there are some other atrocious combinations of colors out there to try out..

I assume this is done by sampling an image? Would be nice to see the original / know more about how you're doing it, or what your goals are.

The minotaur looks great! Especially I like how the background was done.

Have you tried https://lospec.com/palette-list/spaff-8?

You could also try one of my unfinished palettes (probably I'll still be adjusting it for some time before publication):
#310440
#571802
#917e01
#e06309
#c408b2
#006fde
#11bda0

@skeddles Hey! Here are a couple of progress shots that possibly answer some of your questions. It's not a resampled photo, but I can see how that could be the perception. I did use a reference image from Time Bandits: https://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/008/000037_46.jpg

The thing I'm after is the unplannable mess that can come out of a rather aggressive use of color, and then finding ways of making it work. So far, it feels like I arrive at results that I could never have planned for, because I'm constantly battling the competing colors. So it stays surprising and interesting, and really hard

@quickmarble Cheers! Thanks for the tip, I really like the stated goal of that palette "carefully optimised to make everything look equally terrible." Sounds perfect

Are you open to dithering, or trying to keep it sharp

I really like the colors and the forms that you have defined thus far, but I feel like it needs more cleaning up around the hands - the clusters there are not well-defined in terms of having clarity as to what is holding the club and where the club begins.

Really nice overall though!