There's doesn't need to be a consensus. If a crit is correct, it'll make you say to yourself "Oh! Right! That makes sense." May the best crit win.

In any case I've come away from this thread so far with vastly improved skills so I hope I didn't sound ungrateful just before. Thanks to everyone for your awesome insights, they've really helped!!

PypeBros and Mr. Numbers, thank you very much for your insights.

Makes a lot of sense, actually. I see what you mean about how as my sprites get smaller, black becomes more dominant.
Winston in particular gave me a lot of trouble because he is very complex but also very small. I'm going to have another go at some of the characters who seem too 'packed' - Winston is surely in that category, and I was also thinking of giving Victor Hedwig and Elvis Gloom a bit of a facelift (but that is in general owing a lot to the fact that I started with them and got to a stage well past them as I worked on the newer sprites).

Edit: Just finished an edit of Winston.



He now has a five-o-clock shadow, his metallic hilights and glints are now far less busy (and as a result, the gunshape is clearer), and I incorporated the chestplate suggestion. I think overall the design looks a lot tighter now, and at this resolution especially, the forms are more obvious.

I'm currently studying what NES games do use black outlines to see why it works for those games (note that not every NES game even uses black outlines for sprites), but for now it's extremely important to work with the form over the lines, and try to avoid over emphasizing the lines.

Yeah, not all games use the black outlines, I just liked the look of the games that do. But thank you all for your help, it's been extremely helpful so far!!

Interesting point. Reminds me of when I used to compare Super Mario World to Super Metroid.



Super Mario World sprites look a bit more colourful than what you see on the NES but not much more complex than the spritework on some of the better games on the NES. The way it's shaded is more like how I've approached these ones, except I kept the NES black outlines prevalent in many games.
Then there's Metroid, which while not infinitely more complicated, is much more sophisticated in its approach than the Mario sprites. They sat down and thought hard about how to use the resources to look like solid, real-looking 3D shapes. I wasn't going for that, myself, aiming for a more primitive look.

I think for the time being I'll probably keep going with these sprites in a kind of limbo "12-bit" - the project itself is purely for fun and is not a diehard Nintendo tribute by any means - but in future I'll always know to pay special attention to what my imagined "system" can handle. Let's say these were made for the ill-fated GameStation X. :I

Wicked critique, thanks a lot.

Let me explain myself for how I approached these sprites, but I will definitely be taking your advice into consideration.

-The internal lines and very limited pallette (I deliberately avoided using more colours than necessary) were attributed to the fact that I want this to look like a game from the 8-bit era, i.e. the NES. If anything I almost felt like I was using *too* many colours for this purpose. A lot of your advice (which is excellent, and duly noted, by the way) applies more to 16-bit consoles; they'd look much better on the SNES or GBA. Internal black lines and dithering seem to be very common on the 8-bit systems out of necessity.
As for the wayward pixels on Winston's chestplate, I was trying to go for bolts running up his chest, but the resolution here is probably too slow.

As it happens, I am actually thinking of making two sets of sprites for all these characters - one set for use on an isometric plane (the sprites you see here), limited to a more 8-bit look, and a second more complicated set once I've warmed up in a sidescrolling shooter look. I had intended these second sets to look better qual, higher resolution etc, so perhaps I will bump it up to 16-bit altogether with those sets using buffer shades and coloured inner lines.

Sound good?