Thanks Chris2balls for taking the time to do a full edit, that's very cool. I've incorporated some of your advice into the newest rendition, namely showing a bit of the off-hand and trying to take a wilder approach to the cape to give it a bit more life. I've started to become attached to the character's wide nose/face - I think it adds a bit of masculinity that the character needs in order to read as male. Also moved the arm up to be more anatomically correct.



Anyone, feel free to comment on this character if you feel something can be improved - but I get the impression we're becoming bored with this one, so I'll move on to the next character. This next guy looked WAY worse when I started this thread, but I applied a lot of the advice directed towards the first character to this one as well. Take a look and let me know what you think.



He's a bit of an anti-hero who is more concerned with looking cool than actually being good at fighting. He's supposed to be wearing cargo pants with big pockets up top, tailored to be skinny and twisty near the bottom. At this point I don't know how well they read. The cape has been a mystery to me; I feel like the top is too detailed and the bottom isn't detailed enough. I've been looking at it for too long to come up with elegant solutions, I think. Thanks again, in advance, for all input!

Just a heads up, I didn't report anyone. Seemed a bit blunt, but to be fair the face probably did need some work. Here's where I'm at now.



In an attempt to convey shiny leather, I increased the brightness of the highlights on the boots/gloves. I also adjusted the shape of the glove and the shading around the area near the glove to hopefully fix the visually confusing area. I also added a proper "hilt" to the sword to perhaps help with the contrast in that area.

Fixed up the face. Not sure if I like the new "nose" (or implication of one). I have trouble doing faces with few pixels. Also added a third shade to the skin tone but I'm not sure if it was worth it. Actually put in effort with the hair to make it look like some kind of mysterious energy is causing it to flare up and wrap around the character. Not sure about the highlights.

Slight changes to palette for better contrast.

The cape is supposed to be "barbed", the idea being that when combined with magic techniques, it itself becomes a secondary weapon. I tried to show this off better, but then the cape made an annoying tangent line with the sword which drew my eyesight. So I added more red to the sword, but that's just a shortcut and I'll probably end up trying to move the hand around/angle the sword differently so that those two annoying lines aren't so close to each other.

I'll experiment with adding a little bit of twist to the cape next. Thanks for all the comments, I think it already looks a lot better.

Hello everyone. I'm trying to feel out a new main character for my next game. Let me know what you think of this character. He grows up and is supposed to become more calm + confident as he gets older. Let me know if this is conveyed properly. One of my goals this time around is to use more solid blocks of color and less elaborate shading, and instead express form and motion through strong animations. Of course, we'll see if I'm actually up to the challenge.

Thanks in advance!

The arms look really weird to me. It gives the illusion that the front arm is repeatedly disappearing. Yes, the back arm is a darker shade, but that's not enough to differentiate it from the front arm which occupies the exact same space when extended. The girl's torso is pointed 3/4ths towards the screen, yet both of her arms extend in front of her the same length on keyframes. I don't think her front arm should go outwards to the right as far as the back arm.