I'd start the animation with the largest "flare", dropping the inbetween smaller ones you have before that. Weapon muzzle flashes are quite brief, and having an animation with a smaller amount of frames would convey that impression. Other thing you could do is variate the animations, have one showing the largest flare, and another with just small flares (look at a machinegun firing in a movie in slow-motion to get the idea - i suggest Predator ). The brain will fill the spaces between those frames.

I'd show you an edit, but my Ggale can't open your gifs (Color table missing - some watermarking?).

Oh, and the ship looks a bit too smooth, it's hard to tell the individual parts from the others (they all look too mixed into the others - looks a bit like a big triangle with a gradient inside). I'd use less inbetween shades to cut that smoother look.

I loved Dragon's version so much that i had to give it a tweak, for personal pleasure. Here goes:



Hope it's ok by you, Dragon! Tried to stay between both styles, the Kof and the Dragonball one.

Sucks on this bg, though... needed some selout on the skin zones.

I disagree, flaber. Since it's the reference for the base body he's making, i think it's rather adequate that he posted it.

The base for the body looks good, i like the shading and colors. Not the dark outline too much though.

Anatomy wise, i think the toe on the left foot is too big, and the shading on the interior part of that foot up to the heel doesn't look quite good. The top of that foot is also too high, make it "thinner".
I'd make the left breast "sag" a bit more, make it's bottom half curve hang lower. Either that or change the shading on the right breast so it looks a bit perkier, less saguier.
You should try to make the left hand closer to the original sketch - move the thumb a bit inward (to the right) and show the part of the hand behind the thumb (that has the knuckles). Like in the original.
I'd shade the right leg smoother, that blob at the middle doesn't quite help it. Just make the vertical shading lines more smooth, all the way down to the knee (ignore the original a bit).

I like your older work as well. The one with the owl is quite nice (if a bit "messy" regarding the shapes and lines, but just a bit!).
Those small backgrounds look good, i like the one with the "all your base" a lot. On some of them (mainly the blue dungeon and the graveyard ones), it seems you have ocasional tiles that look reduced from bigger sizes, because they look a bit blurry. One thing i like about pixel art is the sharp look of it, and blurry kind of spoils it.

The first forest tiles look very nice too! Screenduskbane.jpg is awesome . Blade of Deleron suffers from severe perspective malfunction, specially with the larger sprite (and that sprite could have it's lines cleaner, too). But the bg's are nice, if out of perspective.

I did an edit of Chomp, hope you don't mind. I'm no expert on any of these fields i'm about to talk, but over the time i've learned the basics, and i'll resume them so it may be able to help you.

Color choice: kept some of you colors (the "mid-tones", middle colors between the lightest and the darkest shades) and tweaked others, by changing hues, saturations and lightness until i achieved a nice contrast. Your original colors where too bleak and close to each other (little variation in hue/sat./lightness between them), one of the most usual mistakes for beginners.

Another important thing to keep in mind is to use a limited amount of colors. This was done in the past for lack of memory reasons in computer games, but that isn't the case nowadays. Still, using a limited palette does help you keep a more uniform look. If you need to smooth out some part of the drawing, just pick a color between those basic ones you have. This is usually done not only in pixel art (which normally is small), but also by digital artists when doing larger pieces. They pick a few basic colors, apply them on an initial rough "shaping" of the piece, and mix them together to blend the shapes where needed.

Volume definition: the shading didn't quite convey three-dimensional shape for the character, it looked like a carboard cutout blob. Shading is one of the most important aspects, if not the most important, in defining the look of the character, giving it depth. I changed the placement of the light source so that i could convey better the shape of it, as an example. You placed the light source in front of it, which is ok but can lead to poor shading (pillow-shading) if not done corrrectly. Even in cartoon and anime style drawings, shading makes all the difference.

Texture: i believe that your inital shading attempt was trying to give texture to the head and "teeth" of the character. But it was chaotic and desorganized, and that doesn't work. It must follow some sort of order for the viewer to interpret it as something and not random noise, as some people pointed out.

Ok, here's a brief explanation of what i changed:

1. Fixed some of the outlines to look more clean (less "jaggy"), and changed their color to a darker shade of the interior color. Change the left corner of the teeth to give it a more round look, and the colors, removed some and altered others. Different shading.

2. Changed the textures. Tried giving a glossy, "metally" look to the teeth, and a furry look to the surface (using only 3 colors for each, would look better with another color but it was just for the example).

3. Added Anti-aliasing and Selective Outlining (look at tutorials for explanations).


9 colors + background transparency color.

All of these things are explained on the tutorials, or on critiques from other works. I suggest you lurk a bit around here, read critiques to other works, and incorporate those in your works.

P.S.: wow, that's a lot of text up there.

This is looking good! Looks solid, nice muscle definition. It's a bit too dark though, i'd bump up the colors, but as you're asking specificially for anatomy advice, here it goes (i'm no anatomy expert, by the way, feel free to disagree).

In orange, i drew a sketch of the skeleton (as i interpreted the characters position to be in). The main problem here is his shoulders, they seem misaligned with the rest of the torso. I gave them some tilt, increasing the amount of "neck muscle" (trapezium?) seen, and lowering his left arm in accordance. I also suggest you align the "horizontal" lower pectoral line to be parallel with his shoulder line (the orange one at the top). Remember the ribcage is solid, and the upper torso always moves as one piece: the abdominal and lateral muscles are the ones that "stretch" to fit the spine twists more noticeably (and those small muscles below the pectorals on the sides, but to a smaller extent).

In blue, i tweaked a bit the volume in the arms, and changed a bit of foreshortening on his left arm. Also, i'd reduce the proportion of the fingers in the hands and show more of the palms (hope that shows on the edit). His right arm looks good, though i tweaked the hand too in the same manner.Oh, and i lowered his left knee a bit, too.



Ok, hope that's helpful.