A few years ago I created this:



Alright, but not too fancy. I just made a new image with a very similar motif:



I personally think there's just a tad of improvement there. (Didn't check the pics for weird colors, remember I am color blind... so...)

The sun light effect in the second picture looks really good, but I'm not sure which one I like more. The first one is for sure simpler and not too realistic, the second one tries to be more realistic, but I don't like the shading of the planet that much anymore, I like that the planet vanishes to black in the first picture.

I don't want to be impolite, but was that a joke or are you really colorblind. I looked at your other pictures, and they often have very colorful gradients, like all those sunset and landscape pictures. How do you do those? I'm sorry, I'm just amazed and curious at the same time, to meet somebody who does graphics and is colorblind!

Thanks Johannski, I appreciate feedback. The planet being too lit up, so to speak, on the night side was something I did consider... May build a version with a darker night.

I am indeed colorblind. Not truly monochromatic, that is, I see colors, I just see them very different. A fairly sizable percentage of people have such issues, especially men, but I think in my case it is relatively severe. Basically anything that isn't a blue is a problem and with blues there's still the risk that I push them into the blue-green or blue-purple too much.

Experience helps a little to deal with it. I go by rgb values a lot and I still get it wrong quite often. Before I post something here or elsewhere, I usually ask someone, "dude, this is supposed to be an orangy sunset, did I hit the right colors?" Of course, this still means that even when someone agrees "yup that looks sunset-y" the colors you guys see aren't quite the ones I intend.

One of the reasons I work with Inkscape (or say, vector art) is that I can fix colors easily. I had to discard many bitmap drawings because they were just way off.

One anecdote: The brain does compensate somewhat. One female co-worker kept talking about her "red jeans jacket" every now and then. Over the course of several weeks (she didn't mention it a lot, say 3-4 times) I realized that she was talking about the one she was wearing - which looked like a dark gray to me. She confirmed that indeed it was, and ever since I have been seeing it in a stark, almost neon, pinkish color. Funny, isn't it?

Wow, that is really interesting! Thanks for this small insight in your life! With this knowledge I look at your pictures in a totally different way... and I'm really impressed. The colors have sometimes a very high saturation in your images, but all in all, the color compositions look rather good!

No problemo. And I am not surprised, since more intense colors are easier than subtle tones.

nils, hey stranger!

One of my favorite Inkscape artists, going way back!

I generally like the older one better too, because it looks like a special kind of.....I think it's a lunar eclipse, where the moon is completely blotted out, and just when the shadow starts to pass, it looks like a diamond ring. I think it's called something like wedding ring eclipse (or maybe just diamond ring), and kind of rare.

I have similar comments to Johannski. I like the changes to the sun/star, especially the hint of yellow in it. I wonder if it could be more than a hint -- a little brighter? I think I understand the effect you're going for, but there seems to be too much light in the bottom third of the planet. I wonder if it would work to either move the center handle of the gradient (well, whole gradient, i.e.) down a bit, or make the dark part larger?

Just fyi on a color. Looks like there's a fairly bright blue (close to #0000ff, if not exactly) stroke on the planet (or larger object behind). Maybe around 3 to 5 px -- or possibly there's a gradient on it, that goes from bright blue at the bottom to nearly black at the top. It's hard to say if it's really a gradient, or an optical illusion created by the strong contrasts at the top. Anyway, it seems out of place at the bottom, at least to me. (Unless we're seeing a zoomed in version? Maybe it works better from further away?)

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts

Thanks for the detailed Feedback. I'll take a look at it and probably make the planet darker. There actually is a blue object behind the planet which has a blur on it, supposed to represent the atmosphere. It is the same all around the planet, but it's really not visible on the top because it's hidden by the sun. Especially if the world is darker, it needs to be removed or severely reduced as well.

This reminds me of a Kerbal Space Program flag.