Hello. It's been a long time since I've done anything but lurked here, but I have a sprite I'm working on and I would appreciate any critical advice before going into the walkcycle.
<Old Newer>Now with zombie!
He's a necromancer, and that's supposed to be a book in his hand. Zombie, small child, and monsters soon to come.

Edit: Sorry about jpg... Tried uploading bitmap to photobucket without thinking. png better?

Ahhh! Feedback overload! Thanks for taking notice everyone, lessee if I can organise my thoughts on the comments I'm getting.

I dont think it's a pixel term, more like photoshop's tool "burn" action (didn't know how to say it=) - dark tones are very saturated in oposite to light tones. But I'm dumb palettewise and hardly good adviser in that.
I would go for something like that if keep existing hues.=)  Also shorten body lenth by two pixels to maintain proportions a bit, but that  just personal prefs.

Ah, gotchya, didn't know that was exactly what the burn tool did (*Isn't terribly savvy with Photoshop, either =P*). I'll bring the proportions-perspective-proposition up with my co-developer. I'm not entirely sold on it myself, since I'm proud of my cutle mutant style, but it might indeed be more accurate. I'll also look into the color modifications, because mine really do need some work. Oh, but the dark side of the nose is already supposed to be the shadow, so the one you added really throws it even more off center than it is, but I will do corrective work on it since it did bring some confusion. Thanks again, fool. 

lovely animation, i would enjoy some more motion in the head unles there are restrictions.  Fool's edits show really good ideas (who'da thunk?) both for recoloring and motion.  I highly reccomend you study them close.

Oh, I surely am, and plan on it for a good ammount of time to come as I make this character.   

Well, I simply have a few suggestions in this matter. The chest/armor throughout the animation just looks like it's slate armor, almost as it a rivetless steel blanket...

I'll stop ya right there. It seems I have a long way to go in cloth since the Seradin Hall school tabard-shirt (yes, a tabard/shirt) is making alot of confusion. I'll put some folds and ridges on the cloth as the body twists with the walkcycle for my next edit to be sure.

The body in general should get wider in posture...

Good point, I'll work on that too for next time.

And the armor shading should be done in different department sections. You should have the main, "base", armor slating, then stomach plating, upper chest/breast plating, and then finally the shoulder plating. Also, if you were to think around realistic terms no one would be wearing a steel plate with typical cloth clothing. So I would suggest a heavier material such as chain mesh/mail, etc., that would have complimenting accents with the armor or completely ditch the steel plating and go with a dark leather/clothe substitute in accordance with the other leather armor and accessories.

ady brought up that Ward isn't suppost to be wearing plate or real armor, but will keep this in mind for the many characters I have who do wear such.

Next is the hair, in any form of movement you need to have animation to the hair, or else it seems like your character is from one from like Final Fantasy 8 (Zell), who's hair is miraculiously held up by an unknown amount of hair gel that refrains it from ever moving throughout the entire game.

Oh man, Zell bugged me. But, yeah, I had always intended to put movement in the hair before it was finished.

Following this, if you ever plan to even have this in a game, you're going to come across a great deal of problems, because you shaded it, it means that there is a light directional in which the side is henseforth shaded, but if you don't copy this entire shading technique throughout the entire game for every single peice in the same 2-tone shaded manner, you will inevitably end up with a horribly perception in light vs. dark/shadow vs. apparent. So what I would suggest is that you lose all shadowing for your game, and use an in-game module to do angular shading/sun immitancy.

We do plan on putting this char in a game (An Rpg, if you didn't guess  ), but neither of us knows much programming. I put the other guy in charge of learning enough coding to get things functional, but expecting him to do anything so extreme as a realistic pixel object lighting program is just not reasonable. So, I'll have to deal with all of the complications and restrictions of the shading method I'm using.

Now in-regards to some facial detail, you need to reformat the face because the nose streaks from the off-center of the characters hair, all the way down to his chin because of the lack of accent you put on the lips and the edge of the character's nose. So in other words, I would suggest using a lighter tone for the lips, or a more natural skin tone that isn't a noticable derivative of orange.

I'll try it out and see how I like the various changes.

Then in regards to the whole animation, the arms in no matter should be jousting forward like they do unless the character is in a world national sprint. Usually when walking character's or just people in general never bend there elbows at such a degree as expressed in this image. In addition the legs shouldn't make the pixel body stretch so back, it should be a walk animation like the following:
  © L.P. Project

Of course you're going to prefer your style, and of course I'm going to prefer mine. You're right about the bending elbows, though. As exagerated as my style is, it might be too much.

Lastly I suggest for such a wide head even for a chibi, that you make the body at least a two pixel width change on the body to make it look even in the slightest sense, able to support the immense head.

I'll try it out, but I'm fond of my deformed little munchkin  . Thanks for writing such a detailed criticism, Hawk. You've given me alot to think about.

Now, let's see if I can get this animation on to it's final phase! *Wooshes away*

For some reason the green makes it look much smoother than the grey. Maybe it's a timing thing different in the animations , maybe it's just the cleaned up frames*shrugs* (You know better than I, what am i ramlbing about?). I personally think these 6 frames should be fine, but I'm no expert in animation as of now. Proportions look fine, as well, though, you're right, that head didn't translate (I thought it was a weird neck and not a chin at first). Another thing is, though the angle makes it hard to tell for sure, his right arm seems not to move forward very much. It looks good, though, so don't sweat it if you think it's fine.

Oh duh! Of course, shoulder rotation.  I should probably rotate his chest a little while I'm at it. Thanks, Serena.