To me, it looks like there is too many levels of shadows causing the details to be hard to pick out. I tried to take the shadows so I could examine the image better.



I noticed the back leg was strange looking and the foot was pointing backwards. The foot pointing backwards works for a standing pose but I think it might be weird when you have to shift the foot forward when shifting into a walking animation. I also make the leg a bit thicker and shifted it forward a bit to try and make it less bent.



From there, I added some shadows back in. I noticed that your version had a lot of 1 pixel shadows around the vest. To me, the shadows made it look like the vest was floating around the person instead of being worn. You could definitely use more shadows then what I used. Just make sure the character is still readable.

I made a quick edit on the frames with the missing tree to try to make it look more like a hologram.


I tried removing every other row and stretching the lines remaining.

You could try to do something similar to the leaves as well. It also might help to have branches inside the tree that could be seen between the leaves or when the leaves disappear.

The image has a lot of high brightness colors and not a lot of contrast. Both of these together make the sprite hard to read. You might want to improve the image before trying to animate everything.

Here are some things you could do to try to improve the image:
First you might want to have on a more neutral background. Colors tend to influence the colors around them so working on a bright green background can make the colors of the sprite look off.
Second you might want to add more contrast so you can tell the colors apart. Make a backup of the image and try picking color that are significantly darker. If you don't like how it turned out, you can always load the backup and try again.

Some things you can try to check your color choices:
Reset the zoom to 100% and see if the image is readable.
Check how the image looks good in grey scale.



After you do this, you might want to clean the image up a bit. It looks like you have some stray pixels on the legs and other places.


I just edited the colors to try to improve them. This might give you an idea of colors you can try.

Also, any ideas on making the shield block look more like blocking, other than adding frames for actually taking a hit with the shield?

I made some edits to the final blocking pose to try to give you some ideas about what you could edit:


What I edited was:
1) Using the new sword. I think the position looks more combat ready.
2) Moving the head down 1 pixel to  try to give a stronger idea of hiding behind the shield.
3) Moved the front foot back by 1 pixel. It looked weird to me for the character to be blocking and sticking her foot out so far.
4) Moved the eyes to the right to try to make it look more like the character is focusing on the thing that is being blocked.
5) Added 2 pixels to the back foot to try to to give a stronger foot position.

Most of these changes were to try to rotate the character towards the incoming attack and away from the player so that could be something to change.

I was hoping to get some critique on this character for a 2d platformer.


I also made an idle animation.



Here is the character in a mock up background.