Actually they're both nice, and the tonal edging effect is certainly interesting.
If I were to use one I think I'd be inclined to go with the second one. Although the first is nice I feel it might be a bit severe if used in a game, particularly I was thinking if you had several of the bots onscreen - some in front of others might look a bit odd.
I like the subtlety of the second one, its enough to make those limbs stand deeper than the rest. It may even be an idea to go one step further and use the darkest blue to outline the torso and head, then perhaps make the black an almost-black and leave that on the nearest arm and leg.

with the black edging, its not something I always do, in fact I can say that i dont really have any set style yet, as until now I've only pixelled for whatever game I happen to be working on at the time.
It is something I'm quite fond of as a style sometimes, the only reason I used it on this was that the colours I was using reminded me of some pen & wash work I used to do, and I thought it would be nice to hint at that.

This was an update I did yesterday but never posted. I had missed some aa and I redid the barrel shine. Thats assuming its a gun and not an industrial leaf blower.

oh sorry, its not that I dont read the posts! I thought it was one long url. I dont read urls,
I click on them hehe

Hi Monsoon2D, no I dont mind when its pretty like that!
I wasnt very happy with the optical bit in mine so I've gone for a bit of a compromise, I realy liked what you did, but I wanted to keep a bit of colour in there as well. I've also taken into account some of the other bits you did, the undershine is really nice and I've applied that to some more of the body, also I was initially worried too much aa might spoil the style but after seeing yours I've added that to most of the edges. Oh  I've also added some proper shadow to the legs and back.



baccaman21, no thats fine, fundamentally I am here to learn, although I felt I'd followed the rules, I just wasnt sure if I'd done something wrong, but I can't say I lost much sleep about not having set up the gif pallette! I'll worry about that when Mr Nintendos knocks on my door with a sack of loot  

Back to the bot, basically, no. hehe I hadnt thought about it but I guess I could maybe desaturate them a little. To be honest I'm not really too keen on that look, its ok on a side view, but in that case it greatly helps tidy up any animation, which I dont think is such a problem in iso. Regardless I might try it anyway, I may change my mind when I see it.

Thanks for the comments etc

Edit: Thanks Dhaos, yeah particularly after seeing that edit I'd noticed that also, hopefully thats rectified a bit in the new version.

I don't spend any time just practicing spriting so I thought I'd try something for fun. The main thing I wanted to do was use a more conventional and logical process, as I have the habit of lining one bit, then colouring it before I've even finished measuring out the proportions. Also I'm generaly bad at stances so i thought I'd practice with a robot.


and this was the process:


any crits apreciated. thanks

I dont understand this: "In other words, actually set up the five pallettes you have highlighted and remap each tile into the relevant pallette and then finally rebuild the image?"
at all. What is it exactly we need to change?