18, please! Woo, this is fun.

DONE!

Thanks Atlus again, for your encouraging words and the edit! I BELIEVE.

I'll see about using more solid shading and redoing the idle pose later. If I make some super fancy changes to the idle, I'll probably reflect them in the walk. Otherwise, I might just make it mirror the proportions in the walk.

In reality, I sort of wanna be finished this game in my lifetime >_<. I can live with a few flaws, even though it may mean it's less aesthetically pleasing than it could be.

I mean, I still have tons more actions to do for this character, plus tile art in a bunch of different settings, a variety of enemies, and special effects like explosions and pew pew lasers.

It's pretty brutal how much resources I need, really. But then again, I imagine the next animations will go nicer now that I've got it going, and really, tiles aren't TOO bad, just annoying to piece bigger scenes together sometimes (especially since I want a big urban area with parallax scrolling).

For now altered the pallete a bit. More contrast things. I kind of don't want super duper saturated shades, but I did bring it up quite a bit on the highlights and shadows, and made the thing have more hue varations. Might be hard to compare with this grey background at 1x, but it's definitely noticable when I view it with Paint Shop Pro 4 (or if you zoom in more).

Thanks again, Atnas. Tried following your advice about the arms. I lowered his neck too, and adjusted the thickness of the coat in several spots. It should look LESS odd now when compared to the idle stance (not quite there though).

Also took some advice from JaJitsu on Tigsource and reduced the turning of the body so it's not so excessive when the front arm goes back. Hopefully this has been an improvement.



Need to put his jacket pocket back in so the leather isn't so dull looking, and go for the scarf. I'll also try and trim 'im down more to fit with the idle pose more.

Well, hair isn't much different from shading other things, other than the fact it's pretty shiny when compared with cloth.

First of all, it doesn't seem like you've really picked a light source. So start with that. Probably top-down is the easiest.

Secondly, your pallette selection is lacking. Start off by using a background other than white, like a blue or crimson or something. It'll probably help influence your other color choices. Then start to build your pallette, trying to pick colors that stand out, but fit well. Okay, NOW that you've done that, go ahead and draw. (If the colors I choose are nice, I find I make better art.)

A word of caution though: It seems like you rely too much on the fill tool and "lines" to draw things.

I would suggest you instead use a 2 to 4 pixel brush (make sure it's pencil tool though) to blob out a body (line art can work, but it's also very restricting if you're still trying to figure out the volumes and shapes).

Now draw a body using the big brush. Afterwards, layer on light and darkness. Now you're not "boxing" in lights with lines, you're painting them in, giving you more control over figuring out where they'll go.

Worry about fixing the appearance after you've got a rough sketch that looks okay. Cleaning up blobby forms should be easier than shading around lines. It is for me, anyways.

So a good workflow: 1) light source 2) colors 3) blob 4) clean up