You mean this is going to run on a NES emulator? Or will you find a way to make actual cartridges? Sorry, I'm not familiar with the NES scene. 

- The new animation looks heaps better.
- The belt armor protection thingy (BAPT) does read as his belly for me, I'm sorry to say. If I stare at it, I might conclude that it's probably not his belly. But I might also conclude that since the dark line above the belt is the shadow of his arm, the bright spot is probably his belly. So it looks like he's wearing a weird wrestling suit, like André the Giant, exposing his belly. It'd be a different matter if you had more colors to work with.
- Jumps and falls look great, really nice sketches! 

@dpixel: Thanks! Hope to keep this rolling!

@fskn: Really great edits and I spent a lot of time looking at all the changes you made. Shoulders, chest, arms, etc, all very nice details and very helpful! Ultimately, it's very challenging to pull back from adding more detail because it often looks better when it's more realistic. But I still want to maintain some level of abstraction and stylistic choices (e.g. big black clusters) going forward, so it'll be interesting to juggle this.

I'm considering the current set of characters done now and moving on to the next batch. Set 3 of 8 for a total of 120 characters.

http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/139682.htm

Here's 10 of the next 15. As you can see, only a few of them are near completion so I am very happy for any feedback towards any of these characters. Gestures, anatomy, shading, whatever can be improved.



But most especially, I need help with the birdman! He's inspired by THIS reference and I don't feel like the foreshortening is working in my version. Head might also be a bit big, really. But I am hoping someone can help me with the perspective and gesture.

All kinds of feedback very welcome, as always. And thanks for the help so far!

Hmmm! On a positive note, totally removing the highlights from his hair actually improves readability when viewed at 1X. With only 4 colors, the brighter hair made it a bit more challenging to process the difference between face and hair. Now it's very obvious and you can see it at a glance. Although the smallest portrait now stands out from the others on account of hair brightness. 

And really, I have to say that removing the deep dark brown wrinkles from the eyes to the cheeks makes him look younger and more healthy to me.

When you have time, I'd love to hear more about what you're planning for the game. Unless it's kind of secret and will be revealed in dramatic fashion. Is there a particular type of game you're emulating, like Golden Axe, or is this something different?

This looks great! Love the 80's barbarian bangs! I bet he loves to hear the lamentation of women.

I can't really fault it, so it's more about personal preferences. I made some changes and I also accidentally ended up with the same chin butt as SeinRuhe and similar changes to the strands of hair. Tiny edit, I think I changed a total of 8 pixels or something. I felt like those cheeks were a bit too gaunt. 



I really like SeinRuhe's edit of the smaller 16x16 portrait because I feel that his version looks more healthy and fearsome, whereas the original looks more skeletal by comparison.

I did not perceive any baldness but I do like the readability on SeinRuhe's hair. Depends how raven haired you want this Cimmerian to be, I suppose.

Great to see some progress for this project! Can't wait to see this guy punch warlocks and dragons in the face.

Phew! Ok, here we go! First of all, thanks to all three of you for continuing to educate me. Frankly, I feel more and more like I just need to go do my homework. In short, I'm very humbled, motivated, encouraged and happy with your replies. As always, I hope I can return the favour in the near future, somehow.

@fskn: How do you recommend I go on learning more about anatomy after watching some videos? Should I just devote x hours every week to drawing skeletons and muscles from those 3D models and trying to copy? Thanks for the links, btw, those are extremely valuable to me.

@SeinRuhe: I'm not surprised to hear that big studios and programmers treat artists better than regular people as customers. It's the same thing with construction workers, carpenters, etc, I believe. Professionals know what to expect, regular people have unrealistic expectations. Great to hear that you've improved your life with pixel art, that sounds amazing! Although to be fair, it's thanks to people like you that I'll never be able to be a pixel artist.  I live in Norway, there's no way I can compete with your prices or skills. I do have some family in Venezuela though, so I could move there and become a professional pixel artist. And emigrate to Colombia if things don't work out.  So what is your long term goal of doing what you love for yourself? Patreon? Making your own games? Muumuu on Onlyfans? Kickstarter?

@SeDiceBisonte: Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! I won't go into detail about every decision but I do like the look of her knife as a diagonal. If I put on my pretentious artsy thinking cap, I would say that her left side (seen from our view) demonstrates stability, being rooted and building a home, while her right side now looks more dynamic, with a diagonal dagger at the ready, a flowing skirt and flowing hair. A turbulent, violent past. Definitely some interesting symbolism going on, I think.



Note that nothing is final and please explain if something is wrong due to me missing an important point (as opposed to choosing a deliberate direction)

Let me see if I can comment on all the changes:
- Tried to fix the hand of the sledgehammer lady now that I finally understood your point, fskn. I can be a bit slow sometimes.
- Tried to make my own version of the stonemason with a bucket, although I'm not sure I succeeded. I didn't want to simply copy-paste so I tried to do it a different way and I may have introduced some new problems in the process.
- Tried to improve the drinking redhead a bit. Which is to say, I tried to improve her a lot but I didn't know where to go. I do want to keep her heroic proportions (keeping the head small) and keep her fairly straight rather than leaning back and taking huge chugs. Maybe I'm just rationalising my umbrella-tendencies, I don't know. I'll make up for that by trying some more dynamic poses in the future. I understand that the reference's hips may be positioned slightly different to how I pictured them but I'm not sure if that has a big impact that I'm missing, unless I choose to exaggerate that.
- Tried to make the mother a super saiyan with shiny blonde hair although I'm not sure the color or reflections really accomplished that.
- Changed the baby's shape.
- Kept the plain face on the baby and the mother because I'm still trying to be minimalistic and avoid my personal uncanny valley of pixel art. I do admit that your details on nose and mouth look good tho.
- Made changes to the brown coat and dress. Tried to find a good compromise for the legs based on fskn's visual explanations (thank you x 1000!!) and Bisonte's version.

In regards to the mother and baby and our different interpretations, I definitely see where you're coming from and at this point it's kind of like the visual illusions where I can see different things. I wonder if practicing more anatomy, gesture and fabrics will make this easier for me in the future. When I copied the silhouette of your sketches, fksn, and shrunk them down, it also gave me a better understanding of what I'm doing with all these characters. I seem to be making all my people wider and chunkier than intended. Their limbs are too thick, their shoulders too wide, their hips too wide, heads too big, etc. Not sure if this is a personal misperception or just a common consequence of working at a really small scale. After all, a lot of miniatures and pixel art sprites tend to have the same problem. It's just annoying that I started out wanting to emulate Flashback and I'm moving more towards Super Mario.

Again, thanks a million and a special thanks to you for the really comprehensive visual explanations, fskn! Very motivating and insightful, even if my amended versions rarely seem to reflect that.

Also, next project. This archer dude who is inexplicably wearing a helmet that obscures vision simply because it looks cool. I may change the helmet, reluctantly.


Trying to use more dynamic poses. You may recognize the statue by Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl