Awesome Indigo, that palette is beautiful.

Couple of crits however:
-the light hitting the club seems to be comming from our right...while the light hitting the body seems to be comming from our left
-consider enlarging the club near the top by about 3px on each side (so it appears thicker...it seems like a stick compared to him right now)
-the bicept seems underdetailed compared to the rest of the body, however it might be due to the smooth look you're giving his 'core' parts (abs, bicept, inner forearm, mid pecs, etc)
-his face seems very toony right now, perhaps detailing it more would help (less sharp edges near the mouth and brow for example, visible veins?)
-possibly remove the highlights from the tail, doing so would increase the depth of the image

You've improved tremendously over this past year, this piece is a testiment to that.

Lovely work, the animations are quite smooth, and those tiles are excellant. Very colorful and stylish. However the animations could use some tweaking.

The north-walk animation is somewhat blurry on various frames, perhaps you should reduce some of the AA/sub-pixel movement. While smooth the details inconsistantly get lost during the movement. Also the shadow seems to be getting larger during one of the frames, unless you're trying to emulate a 'bounce' of the scabbard. If so it should tilt from \ to | (just no where near as extreame, just a few pixels of straightening) during the 'bounce' of the walk. Also perhaps his hat would cast a shadow on his back and the scabbard?

Are you going to try SE/SW NE/NW movement as well? Those are quite tricky to do, you could have some fun experiementing with them.

@Faceless: Glad things look better

@DrDerekDoctors: Yeah I really need to add in some more grass/plains tiles. I'll be adding in some high grass and hills later once I decide how I want to do them. I stole the sub-battle map idea from ogre battle, <3 that game...minus its morally twisted ideals (screw you ALI and CHA)

@Godslayer: Another game I was inspired by heh. Well more 3 than anything...I and II scare me... intimately.

@willfaulds: I suppose the games I was inspiried by are quite evident >_<. You've got a point there, I've got a number of complaints about the golden unit icons being hard to see and distinguish. That is mostly due to their size. I will try to dim certain lesser details to enunciate the key details more (weapons>armor>rest of the body.) And yes I need to tweak the forest/tree shadow, its went awol when I was(n't) looking.

@Tremulant: Everybody <3s the beach ^_^. I'll be removing the town/castle black outline later too.
UPDATED

NEW: I made a portrait and a spell animation, was too tired after coding to fix all the crits (getting to them later tonight after I code some more)






Battle Mockup:
Top right mockup is a WIP of battles. I have yet to make reverse direction of units (whom would be situated at the bottom corner of the battle field)

-Red orb represents enemy leader, blue represents player leader
-HP/SP unit box is toggable (hit a key and it disappers/reappears)
-HP meters are also toggable (will toggle HP/SP/Both/None, adjustable in options and via hotkeys)

Map Mockup
-player armies are golden, enemy are silver (didn't make silver ones yet)
-brown square things are framland
-gray rock formation should probably have some grass tuffs on it
-castle and towns need cast shadows

General
-tried contrasting units more, however its hard to adjust them further without wrecking them (feel free to EDIT[/b] if you've got a better idea/explaination)
-removing the outlines makes the units very hard to read, played with it for a about 1.5hrs...really didn't like the results, units are supposed to be cartoony to a degree (I am still willing to edit the style if people really dislike it)

In europe... I thought it was spelled colour? Anyways cute piece Mirre, the colors are very nice. Those fruit are making me very hungry... *wonders what they taste like.* I love the way you shaded the tree leaves and trunk. Nice and cartoony, again excellent color selection.

Crits:
-you might consider either completely dithering the mermaid or just keeping it block-colored (the body for example as opposed to the hair)
-the fins seem odd (almost unfinished-like), the scales of the mermaid are detailed, while the rest of her isn't
-the reeds should be a bit more washed out (blending with the backround more) given the time of day, tint them more blue perhaps
-consider adding some light-blue or white highlights to the water to form a shiny reflection or to emulate small crests int he water

Crits aside, that piece is so cute. I like it.

Pretty neat portrait, but he seems to have no sides to his head...it goes from forehead straight to hair, kinda odd. Also you might remove the highlight from > eye to give more depth (the eyes seem to be too equally lit compared to the rest of the face.)