I like it a lot, that's very nice highlighting on the hair.  One crit - he looks a little like he has a pot belly at 1x due to the lines on the sides of the shirt and the bit of shading just above the crotch.  Makes it look like he's stuffed into his pants and bulging out.  IMO, of course, and if that's what you wanted then it's great.  It's great anyways!

Mine is on the right.  I made some very small changes overall.  First I think the highlights on the tree are too solid and connected, I just broke them up a bit.  I'm also not sure if the light would reach to the underside of the right branch.

I darkened the dirt at the bottom a bit to kind of diminish it more as it gets lower.  I don't know if I'm a fan of the two big chunks of dirt repeated over and over, but that's probably more of a style thing.  The bits of black at the very bottom makes me think the ground is floating in midair, so I'd either make it the same dark grey as the rest or show more of the ground to reassure us that it keeps going down.

The blacks in the grass seem kind of harsh, and the grass looks pretty stringy to me, like somebody tossed a lot of vines/green string all over.

The top of the tree needs some help, but I'm not sure what, sorry I can't help on that point. 

Sorry if I sound overly negative, I really do like most of this mockup.  The broken fence, hills, moon and HUD are all great.  I'm not sure what the little guy is doing but he looks fine for being so small.

Yeah, that's what I was going for, stylized.  Personally I don't like trying to do realistic proportions on a small scale, I prefer to show more character (though whether I'm good at it is another matter).  My biggest problem is lighting, probably because of the modular way I put him together.  My excuse for that is to make for easier animation: bob the skull and the ribcage seperately from each other as he moves, and animate the arms and legs seperately.  Perhaps that's a bad habit.  Additionally I could collapse him or blow him apart into his component pieces.

I love the edit, Helm, I can already see a lot that will help me fix him.  A couple things, though - I know that individual pixel differences are noise at the typical viewing size of a monitor, but in a game I'd expect him to be blown up 2x or higher.  That's why I wanted to have some details like the teeth, which could even be animated.  Was that particular edit in the interest of removing noise?  I'll have to experiment with more contrast in that area.

Another thing I noticed in your edit was the ribcage.  His midsection looks tilted away from the viewer a bit, when what I intended was more of a barrel shape in line with the head...although maybe I'm working too small for details like that.  Showing each rib does make him pop more as a skeleton.

Oh, and I know my first palette was dull, I didn't intend for it to be the final color scheme anyway - I should've mentioned that.  I just started going and ran into the arm issue and wondered how it could be fixed while maintaining the style as much as possible.  I do like your palette, though.


EDIT: Update with a few different tries.



Feel free to ignore the cleaver thing, just messing around.

Yeah, I was going to mention the human arm thing too.  Remember that cats (and dogs, and horses, etc.) are walking on their "fingers" and the elbow-looking thing halfway up is actually the heel of their "hand."

Thanks for the kind words.

I wasn't really trying for realistic anatomy, just the same sort of stylized angles and curves as the face.  The main reason I stopped where I did is because that's where my sketch stopped, and I realized I shouldn't do a full body at that size before I've practiced a bit more.  Plus I really like his bicep just hanging there, reminiscent of a juicy drip. 

I don't mean to rationalize a poor design choice.  What don't you like about the body?  Where should I have stopped, the base of the neck?  Otherwise, is there anything I could have done to improve the body?