You're right! I attempted to make metal look like metal (with joints etc) without shading at all (due to the small size, cartoony look and animation I felt shading would make things unnecessarily complicated) but your right, it came out as pillow shading 100%! Now that you've pointed it out it seems so obvious.

How to fix it is where it's going to get complicated:

• is there a way to adjust it without having to do shadows at all?
• If no, then I guess the light source should be done as directly above since this thing will be flying and running all over the place, what would be the best way to show shadows without making this thing look like a messy blob of color? Dithering?

Thanks for the feedback it's much appreciated.

Edit: Fixed the speed of the .gif

When this runs faster I think the run looks smooth, but the head movement looks too exaggerated. Any thoughts on the animation and the character (color choice, readability, etc) would be greatly appreciated.

Cool pic! That is a valid point, and the best answer I can give is I'm not sure. The character and the lance are the 2 things that will determine the hit boxes, so if the lance and characters are bigger presumably they would have to be adjusted as well?

In retrospect when I was designing them I was trying to imagine how much weight a bird could realistically carry and designed the knights to suit. Given the context of the game and how ridiculous everything in it is, that was probably a mistake...

Are you new to drawing? I'm a newbie to pixel art myself, but I can see alot of basic drawing principles that haven't been applied. For example:

1) Look at the lines, the most obvious being the line in his back leg. It is supposed to form a curve, but it is jagged and looks very crude. The grey pixels need to be aligned better, there are many tutorials that explain (visually) how to make lines in pixel art.

2) There is no shadows of any kind, which makes the rabbit look very flat. Just like in drawing or painting, pixel art follows the basic rules of art. If you are going to animate it, and thus have left out shadows to make it easier to do so, that's different, but even so with so much empty space on this sprite I feel it should at least have some texture to indicate some fur.

3) Proportions. I have no kept a rabbit for a long time, but from what I remember of them, your proportions are way off. The head is too small, and by extension the ears. I'm also not sure about the legs.

I think that the best thing for you to do right now is practice drawing a rabbit with pencil and paper, and then when you understand your subject abit more come back to pixelating it. Is pixelating a real word? No idea, but I'm running with it.

These are my first forays into pixel art, and more or less digital art in general. They are quite small since they were designed for what will hopefully someday be a mobile game.