I did a bit of a quick edit/redo of your image:


One thing I noticed with your latest rock wall is that it feels pretty flat. The light is sort of casting from the top right, but the way it's shaded makes everything feel rounded and smooth.

What I aimed for with my edit was to create some flat planes for the light to hit and then used the line colour along with the primary shadow to create depth at the base of the rocks, making them sit in behind the rocks below them.

The other thing I did was to angle the rocks slightly down into a V shape as you can see here:


This is also to create an illusion of the rocks sitting above the lower ones.

I didn't use any dithering as I feel rocks can be angular and rough enough without needing a smoother transitions between shades. Instead I focused more on interesting pixel clusters to create the rock shapes.

Hi all, this is my first pixel piece in a while and I feel quite rusty. I've been working on it for a few hours over the last two days and I'm hitting a bit of a wall in progression.

Just looking for ways to really push it to the next level.

Okay I had another crack at this Open/Use animation, I liked it enough to do the other directions:

What i meant by thinness was his stance.  Normally his feet are about a pixel wider and also since hes not moving his heavy armour and movement of the sword would take a wider stance to support.  But goodness gracious that death animation is awesome the blood looks great and the timing is awesome very well done 

Ahh I see what you mean now! I'm going to rework the whole thing, I'm not happy with it

But first I've finished off the up & down death animations now:





Now I'll have a go at getting a better "Use" animation happening, I'm thinking of having him sheath his sword slowly with minimal blur. Make it look less like an attack an a casual action.

Edit: Looking at the perspective between those two animations, I might need to change the down death animation to better suit the up death animation's perspective.

Thanks for the feedback man, I really appreciate it! I worked on your suggestions with the death animation, and improved the blood splatter I also animated the Left side too:





I also had a play around with the use animation, but I couldn't get it to look right, I'm not sure if I addressed the thinness issue either! He looked too stiff without movement on the sheath/draw.. not sure, I might need to rework this one completely.



Thanks again for your feedback!