Hey guys, this is my first post, so I'll explain myself a little. I was a regular lurker at the Pixelation forum and after several days of scouring google recently for all the guys names I could remember, I somehow happened on a link here. I'm ectstatic you guys are still alive and scurrying around in a new corner of cyber space.

I'm a complete novice at pixeling, really. I can draw with a pencil like gangbusters, although I don't do it nearly as often as I used to. When it comes to digital work, my primary medium has been Mario Paint for SNES (seriously, I did good stuff, man). Other than that I mostly know how to photoshop myself (Paint Shop Pro, technically) into pictures with pretty celebrities.

Okay, now that we're acquainted-like, onto my pixels.

First up I'd like to show you what I've been working on most recently and get some advice before I get too involved with it. There's this little humanoid frog guy intended for a game, or a demo, or whatever I'll call the thing I'll never actually finish. Now I realize he doesn't have much of an outline, and that sits fine with me, as I think it suits the nature of a frog charater to blend into his surroundings. You guys are the geniuses, though, so what do you all think?

It's probably important for me to point out that the walk cycle there was completely utilitarian; thrown together in the matter of about a half hour and not intended as a final result at all. I just needed something for quick control testing so I'd have a way to move him around in a more visibly graceful way between leaps. The jumping animation, incidentally, I'm prety happy with. It looks smooth enough, gets him through the air, and even has a frog-esque pose on the first air-born frame. The tongue-lashing animation is probably a complete waste since I never even planned on him doing that, but when I needed something to stand-in for an "attack" animation when pressing the assigned key, the obvious came to mind. As for a final walk cycle, I'm thinking of something unconventional and kind of a side-to-side waddle to fit the character and his big, floppy, webbed feet.

Comment and Critisize to your heart's content, and be cruel. I want suggestions, advice, someone to do the dirty work for me, a new Internet stalker (a pretty one) and some death threats.

Lastly, I'd like to throw in my little self-portrait sprite which has received no less than 2 out of three disappointing comments in it's short life, and without getting specific about that, I'd like to hear what you guys can say about it.


Tell me what it looks like to you and what you can't make out and how you interpret it generally.

By the way, as the world's leading pixel art community, you guys need some classier smilies, for real.