@YellowLime: Yeah, my friend did mention that his version of the first sprite was messy. I thought it looked really cool and made mine look too plain.

All of the sprites are 2D, but the fighting game will be 1D like how Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is in 3D, but it's a 2D fighting game.

I don't think my friend actually did edit the second character, so your eyes may be playing tricks on you with the edit of the first sprite.

Also, my friend wanted me to post the first version of the first sprite he made:

(Only the first sprite is his, the second sprite is my earlier version)

@kriss: Yeah, it will be difficult to be able to create the sprites so that they are easy to distinguish between one another, but still fit some sort of common theme and style. I definitely will want to look into using non-pixel particle-type effects with the sprites, which should be fairly easy to do because I'm using Unity. The fighters in my game "fight" on a linear stage that degrades over time and the objective is to push/shove the opponent off the edge. The twist is that when the opponent is pushing you, you can swap them, which makes you switch places with the opponent.

Really sorry about the delayed response. I wanted to make edits before I posted again, but I haven't been able to find the time so I just decided I'll at least respond to some questions about the game.