Hello.
I'm working on a game, a four point summary of which (from a technical
point of view, rather than a story one) is:

Genera: Real-time strategy game, side view.
Scale: Emphasis on engagments of smaller numbers of units (5-20) rather
than large groups. Individual control mode (in a conventional platformer manner)
over single units is allowed - lead your troops into battle.
Factions: Four factions, very diverse in unit selection and tech tree. Also,
each faction has a different resource cycle.
Expandability: User-made factions, maps, scenarios; Engine source avaible.
Multiplayer: Multiplayer network play support planned.

I can pixel decently myself, but not nearly as well as many of you can. Also,
while I can manage buildings, terrain, simple non-organic vehicles, and the
occasional monster, I am quite horrible at drawing humanoids. Here's a sample
of my work (made for this game) -


Bazaar, Market. (Trade) The Market (right) was the first one I made in this batch of pixel art... I'm afraid it shows.



Gold Mine, Iron Mine (Resource gathering obviously). The chimney was a pain to do but I like how it turned out. Any advice on
doing that kind of thing faster? Also the lines on both headframes look rather poor. Should I anti-alias them rather than
making them blocky in such a way that it looks like there "should" be jaggies?


Aviary Spire (for recruiting flying units.)
I actually like how this turned out, although the base does seem a little strange. I think I should
change the wooden areas on the first story to stone, perhaps? Also, the dithering on the top dome
seems a bit off to me looking at it now, but I'm not sure how. I cheated a bit on the wood texture,
it is HSV noise. I think it turned out better than the wood texture I did by hand on the other structures,
but it is not as good as it could be.

As a general question - do you think I should change the brass (yellow) trim to gray?




It's in the "eh, workable" category, but nothing outstanding. It will do for
testing the game, anyway. I'd appreciate any advice you can give on improving
it, of course. That's why I posted this in -this- forum.

Anyway, though, I'm a primarily a programmer rather than a pixel artist, and
I need to focus my attention in programming and design. Plus, it is a fairly
large (but not huge and unfinishable) project, and one person isn't enough to
do all the graphics.

No doubt lots of people come in here with "the next great game idea" asking
you to do all the graphics so they can start programming it. It probably
doesn't take too many failed projects with a lot of -your- time sunk in them
to put you off of helping people with vauge (or overt) stories of glory and
possibly fortune. So, I'm not asking that of anyone - why should someone sink
hours of their life into a project  on my bare word alone?
(Having done quite a bit of both programming and some pixel
art, I respect the amount of time it takes to do either task well.) However,
a game can't really proceed without any graphics to test the engine.
I would appreciate if someone could do a side-view sprite with the following
properties -

* Looks like an anthropomorphic wolf (or other canine, I'm not especially
  picky at this point. That said, I'm sure that we'd rather avoid the game's
  eventual web forums containing fifty "Is the AL soldier a dingo or a dog"
  debate threads.)
* Has a sword.
* Scaled to the buildings above.
* Light comes from the upper-left and a bit towards the camera.

So far so good. This is the tricky part, at least from my animation-impaired
point of view:
* Left and right walk cycle animations.
* Jumping animation.
* Sword attacking animation.
* Dying animation.
* Falling off an edge animation.

I realize that there is some tedious work here, and if you can't stand to do
two walk cycle animations with different shading, I don't think I can afford
to be picky at this stage. (If you don't want to do that, of course, I would
appreciate getting the pixel line-art as well as the finished product, to
reduce the amount of work needed later.)

Thanks for any help you can give me with this project, either advice for
my own pixel art or a direct contribution. All I can offer in return is a
mention in the credits and possibly a resume item if the game is successful.