Separating background from foreground?

Was wondering if you guys had and tricks or tips for making the active layer you play on. stand out a little more then the background. I recently started redrawing everything (I am really no artist but have been trying my best.) But to me it looks like all the colors are just kind of mashing together everywhere. And my interactive elements and enemies are just kind of blending in. And thoughts?

-Try to make a BG color scheme that's either a fair bit lighter or darker than the FG. For instance, a lot of the hills in Mario games are lighter than the ground tiles. Lightening up the BG rocks would help in this case.

-Different scroll rates for BG layers help if you aren't already doing them.

-Avoid objects similar to the FG showing up in the BG, such as a couple of the ledges you have.

-Avoid any black in the BG (which it looks like you're doing).

Contrary to what you say, a lot of the graphics here are quite nice, especially the player and the BG rock shading.

Thank you for the suggestions. And i definitely will look into applying different scroll rates. I have not done that. I think that might help a lot. But i am Going to go through and try to make the background colors a little lighter To bring out the active layer.

And i appreciate the compliment. This is my first game and have never really tried to draw anything like this before. I feel like i have spent my last two weeks doing nothing but inkscape =)

I think your art is awesome! I think your biggest issue is the the busy-ness of the main character. You might try simplifying him a bit, maybe a bit less shading. He needs to POP, ya know? more solid colours (for example, the dark, solid thing on the top of his head doesn't seem to have any trouble standing out).

You might make a good point. While i am playing through my lvl, he i seem to loose track of him a bit sometimes with the busyness. Although i did lighten the background images and set the background to scroll at a different pace. It made a big difference. But now you got me thinking about changing some character colors. I think you make a good point.