Is there a reason you are sticking to so few frames? It won't take a tremendous amount of extra time to make a few more frames and you can get a wealth of extra character from it.

It definitely comes off with the attitude you intend which is an excellent start for so few frames. My suggestion is that rather than using the standing frame as an in between try using 4 unique frames. Make it clear that when the feet are swinging past each other one of them is in the air and one of them is on the ground.

I assume the finish is very preliminary at the moment but make sure you go in and make subtle changes to things like the angle of the chest and belt, as well as adding some movement to the hair.

This is a great start! If you have any more specific issues you'd like some help with please go ahead and ask. All I can say for now is keep pushing it 

This is a boss for the project I've been working on. It was difficult to get it to appear that she is glowing in the limits of the style, which is mostly concerned with being easy to animate. Especially the way in which she lights the non glowing aspects of the design has given me trouble. The large grey pieces of armour I wanted to look like stone but I wasn't able to come up with a satisfying way to render them. It is intended to be shown on a fairly dark background, mid tones and darker. The effect on her back is meant to look like a glowing beam of light. As she fights these beams would solidify into metal spikes which she would then throw as part of the battle design.

Any thoughts are welcome! I may not be able to implement all critiques on style for this character as there is existing art to match but any comments about how I can improve are appreciated 

Edit: It occurs to me that the second set of arms may be difficult to read. I should definitely come up with a better idle pose for her. That's what those lower dark orange parts are if anyone can't tell.

I'm very glad to hear the discussion in here. I'm not sure what happened in the chats recently, I was somewhat active on slack early on but I felt that it was not pixelation. It was just a way to chat with other community members, which I think we have plenty of options for. That doesn't need to be pixelation or tied directly to it.

I don't have many thoughts about a new format, my main concern from the chat format and twitter is losing self contained threads. Hopefully mastadon is better for that than twitter but I think the beauty of the forum is to have a special self contained discussion that's just about your piece of art and people helping you with it. I think that is a powerful thing that makes people want to participate in this community.

I really appreciated the art and critique focussed nature of the forum, I never needed to know anyone personally in order to feel welcome enough to ask for help. Whereas I would feel less comfortable in a more socially focussed environment. I really feel that divorcing pixelation from the idea of any kind of general chat is important. We have twitter and discord for that now. I also felt that the relaxing of the no one liners rule was eating away a bit at the community, maybe that's just me though.

Like most of us I've been swamped with work and life of late so it's been difficult to find time for the posting on the forum but I'm going to do my best to follow Helm's lead on that and get involved again. I think in addition to helping new users maybe the more experienced artists should commit to posting personal work here for critique too. I know most of us probably feel that asking for critique would slow us down these days (thanks very much to learning how to have a critical eye from pixelation!) but one of the big draws for me was seeing that amazing artwork, the process of how it was created, and how being critical is valuable for artists at every level.

I'd also just like to echo Helm in saying I appreciate eishiya's continued commitment to providing quality critiques

These are absolutely gorgeous, the character design and colours