Your green ship could use quite a bit more contrast. Try making the dark shades darker, and the light shades lighter.

Ah crap, duh! Highlights to indicate liquid.  But what did you mean by bingowing?




MvC = Marvel vs. Capcom (samples above), which I chose to borrow from (but not outright imitate) so I could use games in that style as reference material - and there are a bunch of them.

But the project I'm cutting my teeth on is more like a 2d Diablo, but with more harrowing subject matter. He's set in a world where everything has been affected by an addictive, mutagenic drug - this is what's seeping out of him.

Your rough of the knee plates is great. I gave him mutated grub-looking legs, but he stands on the point of the plates. I like the contrast of something so big and nasty standing on dainty little points. But I've yet to indicate how they're staying on while supporting his weight.

The "screws" on his belly I meant to remove. They were going to be the corners of a big, horrible mouth that opened for bigger attacks. But I decided that I liked his design enough without it. That's why his belly ended up so blank - I was saving that space.

Re: shading, for whatever reason I keep imagining the light source as being directly to the right rather than to the right and in the background/foreground.

Tried to keep this brief, but failed spectacularly. Sorry! I will update the sprite as soon as I have a spare moment.

I've been staring at this one too long; I need some external insight

Notes:

The arms are still WIP; I wanted it be kind of like an (evil) MvC sprite; I plan to give him a third leg so that it balances like a tripod.

Stuff I'm struggling with:

His "knee"(?) guards are supposed to read like metal but I have no idea how to indicate that texture. I also want to have a green liquid dripping out at various points but I can't figure that out, either. The stuff coming from his belly button is my best attempt.

Any insight is appreciated.

Regarding the whole p,agiarism thing, i posit that the Chasm animation is a logical place to start in terms of reference sbecause of its simplicity. Animation is intimidating, it is only natural to take small steps at first. I doubt this is he first or last time there will be Chasm like swing anims, tbh.