O_o you showed me how cga could have been worse than it was. Incredible.

And i can't see any octopuss, stop taking drugs!

GROAR, you made me edit it. I took some of your points into account and also fixed some othe rminor funkyness (see that strange block of pixels right to the leftmost sweatstreak on the leftmost guy! WHAT WAS I THINKING!!!)

About the wrist on the big guy, i would throw that into the style category. If i was going for anatomicaly correct one might as well say that the teeth would not even fit into their skulls (in the case of the big guy) or that the eyes are different sizes on the two grinning ones

But thanks for the crits, tried to improve it a bit.

What's with this thread derailment?!?!?!?!?

Ok now. I just installed GIMP (the lesser Windows Version) and i have to say i am shocked. Few times i have seen a worse interface than this. I played around with older versions of GIMP before on a friends PC (on Linux), but i did not recall it as that bad. GIMP is just a Photoshop for the poor imo, and it shows. It might even have a few options Photoshop hasn't (The Fractal thingy for example), but then again Photoshop, even if much more complex is also much more accessible.

Now to suitability for Pixelart. Perhaps I am too stupid, but I could not find a good Palette option. I found the Palettes Dialogue, that lets me create new Palettes and add colours to them in a rather roundabout way. What is optimal for pixelart, a palette that you can edit in realtime and changecolours in, which then change in the picture in realtime, i have not found. I also could not find a nice cursor, but I am sure there has to be an option to change it to a precise or brushshaped one. That arrowcursor thing is more than just a bit distracting.

Anyway, as far as pixelart goes, Promotion wins (maybe i can ask Jan to make a Linuxport) and it costs only $78 which is not much for what it can do.
The simple fact that it is streamlined for pixelart makes pixeling in it way faster, easier and in the end FUN!

Blick: Like Helm said, going from Paint straight to PM can be a bit of a pain, but PM is not really a complex programm. If you take some time getting into it (granted it is a bit different, because it is largly based on DeluxePaint) everyone who enjoys making pixelart should enjoy PM.
Before yesterday the last time i used Paint was a few years ago, but having some discussion with David, who is a strict defender of Paint, i gave it a try. Before I used PM I used PSP 6 and I am using PM for almost over 1 year now, so i am used to effectivity in terms of pixeling.
Going back to Paint felt like being a zombie. Everything was so slow, selecting colours is painfully slow, zooming, selecting something, the fact that there are no shortcuts to select the tools. Everything is so unoptimized and userunfriendly, it was very hard for me to use it, because I just could not get into any workflow with it.

That said, each to his own, but I still suggest at least trying PM a few times thoroughly, just to see what it can do.

Agreeing with loc here. The charas look pasted on, silhouettes with a nice rimlight would look way better and more atmospheric.
The bg could use a nicer colourramp imo.

here made a lil edit - 8 colours now