Hi Dawk!

First, this is a cute character and your keyframes are very clear and powerful. They all convey the meaning and intent of the pose very well, and there's nothing to change there. Also, you reminded me of how enjoyable kirby minigames are, thank you.

As for the smear frames - yes, they aren't exactly working. There's a few parts to why
-The smears are noisy, and pixel noise break fluidity, interrupting the flow of reading the movement. I would recommend smearing with large blocks of color.
-The smears are not isolated to just whats moving the fastest. A smear is technically a stand in for a frame which does not exist - the frame between the frames is drawn with motion blur. Not blurring in the gaussian blur sense, but more a stretching of the object. For the punch for instance, I would isolate the smear just to his fist.
-You smear things that don't need it. The head turn for instance, that effort would be better spent on other areas than adding a smear to the nose. In the end it adds visual priority to something that doesn't need it. You could, instead, have the ears lag behind and catch up. I feel like that would not detract from the information and sell the movement as quick.
-The teleport (which is kinda a smear!) is used because he is moving too fast to see, if I'm reading it correctly? But then, the direction of the pixels go in both directions, away from where he will be moving. I would suggest a quick blink before the cut away, wherein he assumes a movement pose.
-For those smears when he is assuming a fighting stance, it would work better to draw the tweens for the arms and such on those frames. There is power in firmly and smoothly assuming a stance - rocketing between steps actually makes it seem less well trained!

For the blue lines radiating in, I think they work, but would work better if they held on him, retaining the energy for another frame or two before vanishing. The dissipation conveys that they are not really clinging to him

That punch will really benefit from secondary animation! The cloth, ears, everything. He was just moving faster than light, and hits something with that impact. They will be lagging behind at first, but then immediately he stops, fist transferring all that kinetic energy into the thing he's punching, and the ears and shirt will catch up to him in a moment and swing forward, before returning to their rest position. I think this is the crucial element missing from selling the impact.

Let me know if you'd like an edit! I recommend trying secondary motion first on the list, you'll be able to clearly see where its preferable to the smears.

It's nice that we're open to a shift onto a moder modern format. I just want to bring up that it would be a shame to lose the amazing knowledge and wonderful critiques that have been built up here over the years. Old critique threads are worth archiving as a wonderful read -- often more useful than many tutorials.

Whatever direction you choose to take, I would hope that an archive of this site's tremendous library of pixel critique and knowledge is a top priority.

Agreed!

Echoing Kiana because she ninja'd me:

I do think entering archival mode once the new implementation is running also requires the creation of a pixel art wiki that pulls information and examples from the forum and elsewhere. That will eventually become a much more efficient replacement for the utility of the forum. Wiki is a much better format for this and it's been discussed years ago in prior 'future of pixelation' threads iirc.

I think the utility will be way higher when you can wikiwalk any terms in an article and get the full breadth of information without direct user involvement leaving people stranded and hopeless. It also encourages people accross communities to add their knowledge without the barrier that precedes being a regular, etc. Terms could potentially be automatically picked up and linked in mastodon posts to lead to the wiki articles they correspond to.

Doing this will amplify the strengths of pixelation - knowledge and theory and documentation on the wiki, and engaging real time responses for art critique and discussion on the mastodon - which would feed back into the wiki as concepts are discussed, especially if terms link to the wiki every time they appear. Wikis also have discussion pages, which I believe is a lot more efficient than having nebulous discussions that branch in too many directions.

Ultimately I think pixelation as a website would serve the world better if it was a resource people from all communities felt they could access and benefit directly from. A local community will be present in any space, but it's my belief that the more temporal nature of mastodon will encourage people to feel they are entering conversations on the same level as everyone else.

blueprint i edited the post for you, but you need to right click the image and copy the image address, then paste into the image tags, not the imgur album url itself

Graphics Gale is freeware as of yesterday.

https://graphicsgale.com/us/

edit: oh whoops someone already posted about it: http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=3467.msg187602#msg187602