No problem

That's a lot slicker, better contrast, text is more elegant (and legible) are the colours headed completely abstract? I think that, or some aggressive stylisation is sensible. Never that fond of bevels, either. Old demoscene logos might be a nice, (and philosophically aligned) reference pool for FX while scaling up.

OT, I wouldn't have guessed sun in the first iteration 'cos it seems perpendicular to the lightsource, and to have a shadow.

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Thanks! I hadn't tried that halftone combo and I rather like it; a similar one is used for the ogre and I’m planning to keep that, I was thinking the dither might be too textural for regular skin (tendency to swallow fine detail), but great for coarser stuff, I'll have a play with that that one. There’s a whole variety of humanoids to go at, with every shade of skin as can be wrung out of the palette so I will try everything somewhere! the cyan/blue is pencilled in for a frost giant .

Surt:
Hey, I was just looking at your EGA mockup from a while back for odd colour/texture reference.

Would’ve loved to have seen your full revamp! I’ve had a go at some of the sprites a few times previously. For reasons that now escape me I decided to force a toon look, AA the crap out of everything, and give some of the tiles outrageously contrasty patterns. Most sprites are basically mirrored buff chests, that's how you kick it oldschool I guess. Some less awful ones:




9_6:
Ah sorry, I think redundant colours are me not taking the time to use an index on composite sheets; gif compression I guess, I’ve been doing these in PS on the fly but I might have to break out Graphics Gale. (It's this one)

I know what you mean (on constrast), The yellow is way bright to pair on white (least it’s not magenta ). I would have to rework stuff ground up with outlines in mind to get the most out of them, but to me those examples do lose subtlety, get a bit cramped in places and it's a trade-off I'm reluctant to make. I’m considering adjusting the palette as a whole for these kinds of issues; a kinda ‘fuzzy old CRT monitor edition’ which might make everything play together a bit nicer.


I redid the rat in line with the other couple of animals ‘cos he was looking a bit feeble, I’m realising just how much the two frames can be pushed without tweening; more exaggerated stuff actually works better, feels more complete statement than sluggish half measure. Also tweaked the goblin but might be getting worse, probably time I move on. I feel like I'm shaking off some animation rust anyhow.



   

I'm sure sure what the scene is, what's the concept?

Icons are usually pretty graphic; primary colours, big central icon etc. this looks a bit indistinct and forgettable yet. I find the text pretty hard to read; I'd actually be tempted myself to simply quarter the icon with the 4 letters, find a nice colour scheme, then concentrate on scaling that interestingly if you want to use per-pixel technique on each scale. 

...is a fondly remembered shareware roguelike for windows, probably a bit dated looking on launch! (in 1991), 16 colour windows icon palette and quite basic ‘programmer art’ no real detriment to its playability (procedural dungeons help as does a pretty sweet bestiary and breadth of items and magic). The game’s about beating up hordes of monsters, taking their lunch money and exploring the great unknown; pretty addictive.

I think the sprites are an interesting challenge for a remake in terms of presentation: not scaled with size or related in space to the map, (almost) static; potential for playing with perspective and cropping. I'm sticking to approximately the original restrictions here for the authentic experience.

Screens on Mobygames
Youtube playthrough
Pretty great breakdown on Strategywiki
Download (now released in full as freeware, should be fine on XP, not so much Vista+)

Player avatars: not at all tempted to give them any more clothes, I think the blue underwear is quite iconic. Wasn’t sure about the Simpsons skin (also tried dither as the original), but I think it works dampened by the grey midtone, and in context of the colour limitations. I’m trying to avoid outlining everything despite the palette. Thinking now that the female version was supposed to have braids so might try that later.

No animation for the guy because I couldn't settle on a nice anticipatory resting frame at the time, and I’m a bit sick of him right now. I sort of stumbled onto doing the attack frame animations while sketching alternate poses and I’m really glad for it. Quite aside from the characterisation opportunities it really helps to get a better feel of the character in space, and to break out of more obvious solutions on corresponding frames, I’ll be doing this more in future.



First bunch of monsters! (there’s about 60 or so in the game, aka more than I’m realistically going to have a go at). I’m quite pleased with the giant rat and little humanoids (Goblin/Kolbold), despite some suspect footwork goblin wise that I may revisit (it being retroactively designated animation), not quite convinced with the neon snake yet; maybe it needs some markings/colour variety. The bat’s flapping is a poor excuse for an attack I know but I dunno where to go with that; darting forward a bit? A little red mouth would contrast alright. Monsters are only ever seen on the white dungeon background so any colour combo is fair game.

I don't think the opposite arm needs to move in the weapon anim; seems like it's being pulled out, actually I think having the blade appear without any obvious effort might reinforce a deadly-cool-beam-of-energy feeling. The weapons are one long banding staircase atm which is kinda inevitable I guess, but you could try some alternate, less lightsabery effects like pulsing shades rather than the static neon/white/neon.

On looking less like a robot: I was thinking you could make clear that there's no-one inside by not giving them the room ; making it a little less proportionally humanoid. I also removed some colours I didn't think were adding much, and that might make animations more streamlined.