Here's another attempt at this character, not crazy about it although the stance is a little better and I tried a slightly different style which is a lot less Final Fantasy and a little more original.  I used a more hands on palette instead of just some random colors and I think it's better in that regard. 



  Again all feedback welcome

Thanks

wow thanks pistachio that sure is a lot of information 

- Try not to build on a silhouette if you're just working on a basic body. Silhouettes would be better for exploring dynamic designs, for example, if the character has a lot of accessories or garments attached to him that would alter his/her appearance (or if the character itself has a different frame). Even then it's probably better for more experienced artists. If you just want a figure, building up from a frame to basic shapes is a good way to go.

I have to agree.  The pose is unnatural and awkward looking.  Your pose is far more...relaxed and realistic!

- Banding and flat shading are two things almost featured in the sprite. The outlines seem to be serving as a crutch here. Namely on the limbs, highlights and shadows are placed around them, disregarding basic forms. On the final sprite, this is fixed in a few places, but then the direction of the lightsource is unclear.

As mentioned shading is not my strong suit, and I'll need to work on that to get better for sure.  Your completely right about the light source being unclear.  I'm not sure if I really took that into consideration.  Perhaps I should find some tutorials on lighting or shading?!?!

- Palette is very saturated, yet rather bland. As far as I can tell, the only common colors are shared with the eyes and shirt. Aside from that, there's no trace of, say, hue-shifting, which is tinting colors to a certain hue depending on how light or dark they are. For example, dark green would be tinted towards blue, giving it more of a dark teal appearance, while light green would be tinted towards yellow, thus, a yellow-green appearance.

To be honest I'm just using a very generic 32 color palette that I made it's very uninspired and highly saturated.  Again wanting to find a starting point I just made one and went with it.  After viewing some of the palettes made by users on the forums I think I may try to create one that's a little more realistic.

By the way I'd like to know the context of this sprite. If it's some kind of character selection portrait for a roster, once again, you'll need a better pose, one that says something about his personality/character; more than "I like to lean backwards and stare at things". Or you could use a portrait. If it's for actual gameplay, the feet need adjusting, and my first point still stands; its pose seems rather uncomfortable.

The sprite is meant as the standing pose or initial pose for a character within a platformer style game.  So this would just be slightly animated to show some movement, maybe breathing or something and would act as the base for any running, walking, jumping or climbing animations down the road.

Thanks again for all your feedback pistachio!  Hopefully I can have some updates soon!

Peace!
 

  Well I made some changes to the character sprite.  I changed the hair to make it a little more interesting and added some shading to give it more depth.  I also think I fixed the eye, at least it looks better now



  Again any feedback is much appreciated!

Just uploaded a pre-beta-pre-demo bunch of playable pixels here so you can see what it's like:

http://dev.electrolyte.co.uk/flash/pop/yiro9384j01/

By the way, there's no instructions yet but your the Blue player
 

Very cool style and the game concept seems interesting, at least as far as I can tell without any instructions