Thanks Atlus again, for your encouraging words and the edit! I BELIEVE.
I'll see about using more solid shading and redoing the idle pose later. If I make some super fancy changes to the idle, I'll probably reflect them in the walk. Otherwise, I might just make it mirror the proportions in the walk.
In reality, I sort of wanna be finished this game in my lifetime >_<. I can live with a few flaws, even though it may mean it's less aesthetically pleasing than it could be.
I mean, I still have tons more actions to do for this character, plus tile art in a bunch of different settings, a variety of enemies, and special effects like explosions and pew pew lasers.
It's pretty brutal how much resources I need, really. But then again, I imagine the next animations will go nicer now that I've got it going, and really, tiles aren't TOO bad, just annoying to piece bigger scenes together sometimes (especially since I want a big urban area with parallax scrolling).
For now altered the pallete a bit. More contrast things. I kind of don't want super duper saturated shades, but I did bring it up quite a bit on the highlights and shadows, and made the thing have more hue varations. Might be hard to compare with this grey background at 1x, but it's definitely noticable when I view it with Paint Shop Pro 4 (or if you zoom in more).