I know that it all started out as an idea / new approach and not by the intent to create a new rule.  If I recall right you even wrote that you, Helm, don't intended to do so.
The results are observable in the net, actually I don't care anyways. I just think it's highly interesting to observe the behaviour and effects something like this can have.


One crazy idea I wanted to share/discuss for quite some time now is "contrasting".

What you need to partake / make up your mind is a perfectly calibrated monitor - If you haven't a high quality monitor, which is pretty decent at giving back values your perception will be quite off.
Although you can calibrate your monitor with this tool (which already can greatly enhance perception): http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

I also thought I'd reduce the concept down to the simplest example I could think of: 

-With contrasting I just mean how small/big the gaps we use between "areas of the same color".
As we all know color is quite a topic on it's own, so I am just focusing on value for this example
(which is basically one of the 3 dimensions of the hsv - color space - (hue, saturation, value) but also has the biggest effect).

I also decided to do my example against the most neutral color at our hands - 50% gray.

I made a chart which contains:
lines: squares at brightness levels starting at 50 and going up to 100 (pure white)
columns: outlines with a value level starting at 45 and going down to 0 (true black)

I think that there are areas where the outline looks "washed out"
I think there are areas where the outline starts to "burn" (the contrast hurts your eyes)
I think that there is an area where the outline just looks alright.

For this simple example I want to pin down the area where background, outline and the square look as a whole nice to your eye.
SO all you have to do is actually look at the chart and search the points where it starts to look washed out and where it starts to burn.

Beware that the human eye adjusts it's color with time. SO you should have looked at something else before you do this and try to not spend longer than about 5 minutes with looking at it, otherwise your perception changes, because of the architecture of the human eye.

Maybe add classic gameboy / game boy advance release dates as well?

you can play around with various settings if you do those tiles
The key point is to keep readability in mind and avoid clutter, while staying detailled.
YOu also want to get the players eye to the important spot, tell them how far/near something is and what importance it has visually.

In order to achieve this you can alter:
-color contrasts (how all main colors of a palette correlate e.g. warm/cool orange blue -> complimentary contrast for more contrast)
-color relationships (within a single ramp of a palette: is it a straight ramp or will ther ebe hue shifting applied)
-value relationships (what relative brightness, darkness elements in the scene have - i altered the ceiling, the wall and the top of the walls)
-contrast relationships (what contrast ramps in the artwork have - i mainly edited the floor contrast to get rid of the clutter)

according to the balancing of every element, you can get a completely different impression in terms of how the player will read the graphics and recognize where to go or where to look at.

your art still suffers from too short legs. it looks really unelegant if the head + torso together are longer than the legs if you have nicely detailled characters (with feet, real hands etc. that they give a feel of believability.) With real chibis, which consist just out of the head and have all other body forms stylized heavily it looks ok.

Posing characters is storytelling!

You don't use striking action lines. hat S-rhythm with the forward bend legs and backwards bend upper spine makes your figures look hesitant. If you use that for an armed character it tells a story like "hey I am weak and afraid, please don't harm me" which is absolutely ok if you go for such a character, but generally I suppose you want a bit of heroism.

For that consider the mass center of the body. Usually you want to avoid strict standing poses, unless it's cool posing and you also want to avoid extreme dynamical action poses (unless you are doing the keyframes for an animation) - this means you are left with the "about to" pose.

The about to pose is the pose where the character shortly hands a pose before he goes into action. It usually communicates tension and it's easy to tell what movement will follow next.

On another note I'd try to implement some foreshortening to give away a better feel of volume and space.

Made you an edit for your 3rd pose:



in an animation your pose could be displayed shortly before my pose (where the hero crouches and then he takes the step before an attack) - my pose is just more expressive in terms which will happen next becasue it only works in 1 way. Yours works in 2 ways, since we don't know if the hero is falling back or taking that step of my pose.

Have you ever checked out our Archive?

http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=2076.msg161933#msg161933

If you already know how to set up photoshop, the rest comes from your drawing skills and practice.
While there are a multitude of tutorials out there which focus on specific techniques, like tiling, AA or how to Dither, it's pretty hard to find good stuff which goes step by step over everything - because it's complex and there are tons of different styles.

But in our archive you can see threads from people of all skill levels, their problems, and how they solved problems according to their critique.

Is that what you are looking for or is it too advanced?