Feedback for Indie Game Art

[DapperDave]

Better yet, I'll show you with an image! An image is worth a thousand words, after all.



The image on the top is a straight color ramp, and the one on the bottom is a shifted color ramp! Both of these ramps serve their purpose, but many would agree that the bottom sphere looks much better. The sphere on the top only has colors of solid red but the sphere on the bottom shifts its hue as it becomes brighter. It starts with a purple-ish hue of red then becomes more orange as it becomes brighter. But why purple, red and orange? Well...if you look at the color wheel, purple-red-orange are all next to each other, and purple looks darker than orange so it would work better for the shading.

You don't have to hue-shift as much as I've shown here, though. I've exaggerated the technique a bit for my explanation.

Thanks! I think I get it. Is there any specific part of my image that you would definitely apply this technique to?  Like the tree tops for example? Or just everything?

Is there an exact formula for determining the colors in a hue shift? Like if I just start with one green color, can I mathematically determine the next several brighter hue shifted colors and the previous several darker hue shifted colors?

The tree top is actually just 11 colors (maybe more were added when I resized it). I'm posting it here in its original size with the color palette. 

Is there a simple way I can take a middle green color and create a new color palette using hue shift?