Hey, Kaczor.
As I've promised I edited your sprite. It took me a lot more time than I care to admit (
), but I think it was completely worth it, since I've learned a lot in the process and hopefully it'll help you improve your own technique. The sprite created a life of it's own and I probably went too far modifying it, but it was fun as hell! Thanks for letting me do this.
I'm far from being an expert on pixel art, mind you, but I do know how to draw quite a bit and that really helps. Anyway here's the final piece:
What I felt needed changing:
1. Anatomy. The shoulders were too low and the limbs too tick and yet too rounded. I know he's supposed to be a warrior, but I think it has a olympic weight-lifter kind of muscular mass volume, although most muscles seemed out of place..
He's also too short IMO! Specially the legs. To fix that, you can either shrink the head or stretch the rest. In my edit, I've only lengthened the legs (check out the seven-heads tall bar on the last frames).
The chest area is projecting a shadow over his stomach area, making it look concave, when in fact that's almost flat if compared to the thorax.
2. Medievalness: By the looks of his garments and hair, he's probably a novice warrior, in a level 1 peasant kind of way. Again, it felt right that such character should not be so strong and so I've made him look less muscular. Well, he could be in the castle building business and be stronger then the average medieval dudes, but I still think you should get some references to check how muscles should look.
Changed the shield... added straps, wooden boards and a thin leathery finish line around it. Your's is currently too tick and pillowed, as if the shield is cushioned or something.
That said, I think you've come a long way since your first post and it's pretty obvious you're improving each day. Keep up the good work.
-Stefano