The boundary between her hair and face is really indistinct, and her face seems really empty. There's plenty of space there for more features, but there are none. Some of your colors really run together -- don't be afraid to push up the contrast! Anyway, this is far from perfect but maybe it will give you some ideas~
I like your run and idle animations! The blocking one just looks like she's posing with the shield though.
Oh man, I totally see what you mean now. I messed around with the colors, the shades are a bit further apart, and the hair colors look more natural than the previous neon yellow. Hopefully blends in with the face less:
I know yours still does that much better but I'm kinda stuck because I like the skin as it is now even though it still doesn't contrast too much with the hair! I dunno, I'll keep messing with it... As for the face-blankness, I admit I kinda wanted that on purpose because I like the look of characters like from Journey or Konjak's
Iconoclasts(
) with just the eyes visible most of the time - though your version with the nose looks super cute I have to admit, and I also added just a bit of an elf ear sticking through the hair on the left. I floofed the hair out more too, and while I think it looks better overall I kinda worry the head's too big now, crossing into a more cartoony look than I'm after. Maybe I'm just being dumb and I'll get used to it, lol. Also, any ideas on making the shield block look more like blocking, other than adding frames for actually taking a hit with the shield?
Yeah adding outlines as darkers shades of the sprite colors, or some selective outlining would bring the sprite into a new level. Animations look good. sword looks a bit stiff though
Outlining has been the hardest part for me to figure out I think. That's why I thought I'd cheap out and just use a solid color all the way around, and give each player character a different color (blue, green, etc.) and then I could even have the outlines flash to a brighter shade when they were near death or something neat like that. But either way I do still want to make a better natural outline without having to tack that on. With the sword stiffness, would it help if I added a third frame for it to bounce a little further down?
The new sword position is definitely better. I was imagining it pointing towards the upper-right corner of the screen, but the way you did it works fine as well. The most important thing is for it to look natural when she runs.
Phew, that's good to hear. I was also considering having her sword arm swing up when she runs to look more like actual running - if the sword turns up more when she does that maybe it'll look even better than what I've got now.