Hi Tyler, here are some examples of my work.
email me mattfilhol@gmail.com if you're interested in working with me 

Hi everyone, I'm in need of your excellent advice.


I've been working on this on and off and feel like I may have become blind to some of the usual basic flaws I fall prey to (colours, lighting, form, cohesion) so thought I'd pop it up on here to nip any problems while I finish it up.

Any advice or design suggestions would be great or just a thumbs up to get it finished.

Good edit, maybe try altering a few of the books on each side so it's not perfectly symmetrical.

Thanking you all for the comments and edits - Great feedback! This forum rocks.

@Fizzick: I love the Yoshi's Island art direction so I think I'll try push that more in the next pass.
@Jim16: Very keen eyes, Tom's my brother so having access to all his old work, his advice, and sharing the same influences it looks pretty similar. Totally agree I need to find my own voice though, so I'll keep pushing! Sneaky lizard's given me an idea for a different project...

So after an accidentally long holiday:

The pre- pass of edits I tried, I was thinking I could use the lil purple fella for something later on:


The second pass:


Apologies for the retarded working method (laying out all the changes) but I tend to push pixels on an existing thing then hate the changes I've made so I like to keep previous iterations, I'm certain this will go away as I get better at making design and pixel decisions! 

Under the blue >> different outline styles (colour, black, thick), went for central, but so easy to change just as it's just the icing on the cake for when I get the forms and colours down.
Under the pink >> most improved? maybe the one with a larger head (up+right) is better. still not sure about that 'snout' either (Is it called a snout on a dinosaur?), perhaps idle frame turn towards audience, potential spikes (I'm not a fan, I want cute not badass!)

and under closer inspection a few random grey pixels > epic fail