Hey mzn thanks for the heads up! Unfortunately I think I've been looking at her too long to see what you mean.  Do you mean HER right foot (on the left) or HER left foot (on the right)?

I think my main suggestion would be to start by trying to draw a more familiar shape. You know, something more recognizable. With this particular image, especially with so few colors, it is hard to tell what is happening. Even simple objects can be tricky when it comes to pixel art. Take this barrel as an example:

Depending on who you are you might choose to stop on the bottom left one and say "That wood there is obviously wood, I don't think i could possibly add more detail with so little pixels so I'll stop here". Which is a perfectly reasonable point of course, but the bottom right barrel shows you that there was so much more you could have done with the wood on that barrel and even a single pixel here and there can make all the difference.

To be honest, I've never even attempted dithering and still shy away from it. I think that it may be due to the fact that most of my work is at a lower resolution and that it is generally a technique used on higher resolution art to give it more of a retro look.

But anyway, I would definitely suggest starting out with something more familiar that you will be able to recognize when it is finished. You will much more easily be able to tell when something is wrong with it because of how you are imagining it to look.

Hey everyone!

I've made a little progress on my red haired chick and have somewhat finished her advancing animation. By advancing i mean jumping forward as the game is meant for iOS and swiping to move makes more sense than having an on screen joystick (which makes little to no sense). Anyway, critiques are much welcome! I have some doubts about the last couple frames of her jumping.

Also try not to be too distracted by her idling so quickly. I don't have software at the moment for setting individual frame lengths and her jump should be faster than her idle in reality.

Yeah I get what you mean. I guess you can imagine him running either way.
Bit of a tricky constraint to work with.

I think you've done an awesome job of animating him so far, while the movement is very over the top i think it has a certain character to it. I like that you have animated his whole body moving when he runs, maybe just lighten up the arm at the back? Looks like someone else's arm. You've also formed his body well but the bulkiness in his idle doesn't seem to match the bulkiness in his running. I went ahead and did a quick edit of the first frame of his idle:



I changed his skin color palette to define his muscles a little more and used the shape of a later frame for his shoulder and arm positions as he looks bulkier that way. I think that if you used that as his base frame instead and then animated from there he will look more buff and less stretched upwards. I also moved his pecs up as his pecs probably shouldn't be hanging so low and also added a little edging around where his abs would be. Also smoothed out his shoulders a bit and added a couple pixels on his left arm (on the right).

The most important thing I changed though was his hands. They kinda looked like a confused mess of pixels and I gave them some shape. When ever I do hands, especially when it's a fist, I focus on the direction the fingers flow a use the lightest color to create that direction and the darker colors to define the "holes" or concave parts of the hand.

For some example on hands, while they might not be very good, below are some animations I did a while ago (the last one is supposed to be him treading water). I think the hands are best defined in the jumping and the swimming where you can see closed fist from different angles and open hand from different angles.









I hope some of this helps!