How about some shoulder rotation and a little lifting of the leg?

It *would* change characterization a bit, some movements might be possible to deemphasize, but just an idea

This will be fun. I am horribly inexperienced with side-scrollers 

I will pick this reference to make sure that I know what I'm drawing: http://www.kiddermathews.com/img/services/industrial.jpg
and that's good practice. Unless you have things firmly into memory, you're gonna learn new things about what you're drawing if you simply use a reference

I look at proportional relationships between the horizontal and vertical supports, and I 'carve up' the game screen like this. I have a background, a tileset layer, and a layer for sprites (characters and goodies, what not). This helps me  decide how to use my space on the game screen


And so, I decide that vertical supports will be 1-tile wide, and horizontal support sections will be 2 tiles tall, 6 tiles wide, plus another tile on top for the actual platform you stand on

Once I got size relationships down, I can then add as much detail as I want until I'm happy with it. Since this is just showing you a workflow I think is solid, this is something I wouldn't put in a portfolio yet, but this should be good enough what what I need



If you create tiles without having a feel for how they fit together in a level, something's gonna feel missing. It gets better with experience though, when you have a better feel for how you use your space for a more powerful game feel

Ref: http://fav.me/d26eufx

http://www.mrwallpaper.com/wallpapers/ukraine-landscape.jpg

Things farther and farther away should ideally fade to the color of the atmosphere 

The way the trees are currently drawn conveys a flat fan as all branches are going off to the sides; instead, some branches could point toward the viewer map others may point away. I suppose the flat-fan 'mistake' doesn't look too bad when the landscape is already a flat tileset but I'm just throwing that out there

Oh, and the turtles are dangerously camoflauged. If you want to keep them green, they could be a more chartreuse yellow-green hue to distinguish from that flat-green grass, but it should be lighter overall for visibility

I was looking at a movie named 大明劫 (i.e. "Fall of Ming"), and I think I have a good feel for what Chinese interiors look like.

Also realized that the odango hair stereotype partially came from the 14-17th century. People back then over there wore cloth wrapped on top of the hair buns, though most of them had only one bun. The practice may or may not have been made illegal in the next Qing dynasty so it might be only a renaissance-period thing. I found this kid though, has what I'm also looking for, which I'll trust is a historically accurate example
Spoiler
Anyways, I made another study absorbing what I can from the movie. I'll trust that it's acceptably accurate if it is made by and for a Chinese audience with reasonable expectation that it makes sense to them

(forgot that I uploaded a 3x version to tinypic. oh well.)
Spoiler