Ryumaru!!! Thanks for your help once again I feel like I gotta put your name in the credits, your last post helped me so much in developing my pixel art technique. I'm actually on the verge of completing a demo I plan to send out to publishers, find some funding. Took me quite a bit of time to get here!

I know what you mean when you say you see multiple different styles happening in the portraits over the months. I sort of return to them when I feel like I've improved in some respect. It is also just a chill exercise to see what improvements I can make sometimes. The style keeps changing because my eye for what looks good is changing haha.

Your edits on the portraits are really amazing to see! There's so much I'm looking at and trying to notice how you managed to improve subtly and not-so-subtly on mine. I agree that their mushy arms and general body structure needs work, I haven't done much anatomy or even figure studies but it's something I am working on.

For Ryan's portrait (purple hair) I think your shading on the arm improves it a lot, in the final I think I want the lighting to be more dynamic, like with a stronger light source from the left. But for now I think its at an alright place. Here is another edit on Kenneth using some stuff you did. The hair I didn't change too much because I wanna stick with that segmented-90s anime look. You did give me some ideas on how to define the shape better, though! Plus, the arm was really irksome so I redid it.

Thanks! Yes, I do think I could have stayed more on-model. I still have a lot of trouble with proportions.

Here is a self-portrait I was messing with for some kind of social media icon. Tried a lower resolution. I think I could stand to go lower, though. Still trying the dot gradient technique, I may be overdoing it here.

-> (rev 1) ->
Portrait I have spent a couple of hours on. I'm still trying to improve. Just wondering what sticks out as something I could improve. I haven't spent much time on her clothes, btw, those are pretty rough at the moment I acknowledge.

For reference, this is the character Alisaie from Final Fantasy XIV.

First up, these sprites demonstrate a lot of character and attention to detail! I think this is for sure looking better and better.

My main criticism is the flawed use of perspective. In adapting the first sprite, which generally has correct (if not stylized) proportions, to another viewing angle, you have warped the character's shape. If you had a look at my game's thread you might have noticed we are using the same perspective for out character sprites. One thing I have learned as I make them: to get the correct look for the different directions, the limbs of the characters cannot line-up exactly between the sprites because that would be ignoring perspective.

 Looking at these bent rods from a side, front, and back view, you can see that to accurately depict them, they must be drawn completely differently. Your character's arms are in a similar shape.





I see that you have lined them up exactly with the purple line. You gotta adapt the shape using tenets of perspective drawing to get a look that is desirable. One last point, with an animation where your character is running so energetically, I would recommend showing the shape of the legs through the skirt because they most certainly would be altering the shape of the skirt with the amount the legs are lifting.

I hope this helps!