Yes, yes. I will change the mouse colour. That is just the old sprite..

Ok, I've darkened the background a bit and overlayed a font in PSP. Does that look ok to everyone? Too dark, or about right?

Gnat: They may scroll, they may not.

http://www.reflectedgames.com/titledesign3.png

I like this current version best.

I think you should use a font that's more "fun" for the title. like the Family Guy.

also, I think the rainbow should be transparent, and without a gradient.

Mark: If I make the rainbow transparant then all the colours will be tinted towards blue and the gradient will show through as well.

Do either of you (or anyone else) have any suggestions (or mockups) of an alternative font for the Sunny Ball text?

I'd be interested in any suggestions/ideas for this.

Here's a version without any title or option text:
http://www.reflectedgames.com/titledesign4.png

Feel free to experiment.

For a moment, I thought it might be nice to reverse the rainbow gradient compared to the background gradient. On second thoughts, I think the probably creates too much contrast and attracts too much attention to the rainbow instead of the menu text.

Anyway, looks sweet so far IMO. I do agree that you could do a little animation of the sun (nothing too much... should be subtle. Maybe have the eyes blink every once in a while or make it look impatient or pout if the user does nothing for a while) and make the clouds float. I also like the idea of the occasional spark running along the rainbow.
That's all probably just stuff you'll want to add later on though...

EDIT: I like gnat's first try a lot Although I'd probably opt for giving the menu a different colour from the title text.

I'm not sure why, but that font doesn't quite work for me. I don't know why as it's nice and rounded.

Evert: An earlier picture had reversed rainbow gradients, but it seems to look better if it follows the sky gradient I think.

I like the idea of the blinking eyes, that is something I was thinking of myself.

The floaty clouds thing is a bit of a pain. The reason is that everything including the text is anti-aliased. If I move those clouds about I'll have to have them have no anti-aliasing which I think will stand out a little bit.

EDIT:
Oscar: A translucent rainbow will look blue tinted, and real rainbow don't in my experience. I could lighten the background a little as it was before, however that means the option font would have to have a dark border as the background/clouds start to get too bright.

I don't know, I like the dark version with the white text over it.

Ah yes, I see it. That picture is overall brighter too, isn't it? But it probably draws too much attention to the rainbow, so I agree you should just keep it as is.

Small animation effects like that add that extra layer of polish...

I'm not sure I understand... wouldn't you have the sky-background gradient as one bitmap, the sun, rainbow and clouds as other bitmaps and build up the titlescreen at runtime? I don't see why the clouds couldn't have anti-aliasing in that case.
By the way, if you want to go for a more realistic sky gradient, you should combine it with a circular gradient so that pixels become lighter near the sun. I don't think that would really look good though, so probably best to just keep your current design for the background.

Evert: If the clouds have anti-aliasing then any combining clouds would show blue edges using simple blitting. Similarily any cloud moving underneath the yellow sunny ball text would show a yellow/blue anti-alias edge. So I would have to either use no anti-aliasing on the clouds and on anything that the clouds can move under, or use cpu expensive alpha blending on all the clouds and parts of what they move under..

Yes, I could make the gradient more realistic, but I agree that it probably won't look much better for this purposes.

As for the rainbow, I don't really see how an additive blending mode would stop it being blue tinted? The only thing I can see is having the edges and colour boundaries more blurred, but I don't think that's what you are suggesting?

Heres an experimental one that could work if the art in the background was moved around a bit. Its more straight edged, like the sun. I think the style might be a little too hardcore for the game though.
http://dragoon.pacdat.net/titledesigngnat2.png

Heres the previous one, with different menu colors and the shading corrected to match the sun. I like this one, because it matches the soft art style very well.
http://dragoon.pacdat.net/titledesigngnat3.png

Edit:
Here are the fonts ive collected so far.

The clouds must move (some in foreground and some in background) and the text must stay off the rainbows.

Looks very professional and consistent with the game style. I would definitly not miss out on that rainbow sparkle once in a while. Sparkles are lovely in menus! It would be cool if the sun looked at the mouse pointer (and not that graphically intense).