Creating a setting

Hey there steemit, Before I start per usual I want you guys to check out @jonny-Clearwater 's Pixel art weekly contest! If you hadn't known, it may just be one of the longestrunning contests in steemit and I absolutely freaking love it to come back to this event every week. It gets my creative juices going really!
Anyhoo click me for the link to the glorious contest

Now on to the main topic!
This weeks pixel art weekly is about the theme " WATERFALLS" and what could be more fitting than a fountain of blood? I know pretty edgy right hahah But I just really like these sort of things whenever I do pixel art its just my thing.

Anyway off to the tutorial/process and I sincerely hope you all learn a tiny bit of me and my thoughts.
So first things first I place in my composition, it's going to be a path leading to some sort of iconic or unique object in the middle. I would make contrast in my head by using different colours and a variety of shapes for the rocks but only one unique shape to make this mysterious object stand out!

And heres the monument it's gonna be smack bang near the center and the rocks will sort of be like a path to guide you to this monument.

Then I fill in the missing bits, Don't worry it may look plain but trust me getting the basic shapes and form is really important. Its gonna have a drastic change once i put in my shadows and lights.

heres a path.

I wanted to make this more "in ruins" so I added sillhouettes of rusted swords, I love my rusted sword. and with pixel art you dont have an abundance of the canvas to paint each sword so you have to gesture what it would look like far away.

Add in that background, something dark to make the foreground and middle ground pop!

A little bit of light reflecting off these swords/rods.

AND BAM!! LIGHTING AND SHADOWS TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN/HILL.

I felt the monument was too straight and boring, if you look at the sillouettes its a fairly meh shape so adding a few bumps would make it look more interesting to the viewer. also adding blood running.

a bit of the light on the river of blood.

Whenever I animated I always do the base. then the shadows second. To get the overal gist of what the image would look like.

Once I felt comfortable I places in some quick lighting to make something interesting.

And some rays of light or energy to keep the viewer engaged a few seconds more on this haha.

Anyway I hope you all enjoyed this small tutorial on my thought process with pixel art, but keep in mind this can be useful for your 2d sketching as well! I bid you goodnight as this factory worker has to get to bed and work soon :)

If you liked my content please do follow and upvote my post <3

@lunaticmoon