[C&C]Platformer Hero

[McSkippy]

Trying to improve on pixel art some more, also this topic is in response to my other topic I made a few weeks ago.

I'm just trying to practice on using black on more colored pixel art. Also, I can't seem to save transparency with Graphics Gale?
NEWEST:

[zez]

Daw. Its cute.
The black outline is sorta bugging me tho.
I would suggest getting rid of it altogether, making it have a full black outline (loosing the sellout altogether,) or on the hair, only outlining the bottom of the hair in black, and maybe using your darkest shade as an outline for the top, and using the black outline to hint at shadows.
Of those suggestions, I think the last is probably going to be the closest to what you are going for, and look the best.

*EDIT*
PS. To make transparent images in graphics gale, you go to the top left button on the frame (so, in the frame window, there will a button labeled "..." in the top left corner, right above the thumbnail.) Then check the box that says 'transparent' and choose a color. Hit 'OK', and you are good to go. If the image is animated, you then want to go back to the tab, after checking it for the first image, and check 'all frames'. for some reason or another, you cant set the color of transparency AND apply it to all frames at the same time, and thats even weirder because you NEED to use transparency to use onion skinning on your animations.
*EDIT*

[McSkippy]

Like this?

[McSkippy]

Sorry about the double post but,

I think I got it.
Also, portrait of the hero(unfinished)

Jaggies are hard to fix on this pic
Also

Coins are win. 

[McSkippy]

Haven't updated for a while, so here:

Went all Shonen Jump Allstars(DS) on it. Transparency is only because I used Gimp on it.
Also:
64x64 Portrait Revamp
Uses around 17 colors.

[yaomon17]

I changed the lighting and colors a bit. Reduced from 20 colors to 13 colors. 

[McSkippy]

Oh Serious WIP on this:

He's not suppose to be blue ,but whatever. I'm just wondering what you guys think about the outline.
I had some trouble on the shirt with it's folds and creases and stuff.
I'll update this thread with other stuff once I have the time.  
EDIT:
Too lazy to put transparency on this one, C&C

Was also too lazy to fix the hair and the white line on one of the frames.

[Jim16]

Hi McSkippy, I'm liking these.

That Serious WIP portrait is a very disproportionate, even for a animé/manga style, the pose also seems a bit awkward, like he's going to fall over. You should try to stay as close to realism when starting with art. I don't like chibi to much, but thats just my preference.

The actual sprite is very well made, and that running cycle is looking pretty neat if not a bit slow(might be chrome though).

[McSkippy]

Thanks Jim16!
Does this pose fix it?

[Mike]

I think the pose is fine but you might want to make sure you know what you want your guy to be looking at.  That would help out a lot.  The way the clothes drape needs to be fixed.  Only way to do that is to read and understand how they work.  Heres a tutorial.

http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=clothing#/d2wus71

part 2 http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=clothing#/d2wvb4z

As for the run; you shouldn't inbetween the arms as they fall downward only as they go upward.  Right now when his arms come back down it looks like they are trudging through water.  Actually now that I look at it is more so the spacing and less the frame count.  Also I noticed you have 11 frames which is not even.  It might be ok but it screws up the up and down body movement and in my opinion makes it jarring to look at.

Heres an edit
Both for comparison sake.
What I edited yours

Oh and only the front arm is edited I left the back the same.  The reason being because it would basically be the same and everything you need to know is in the front arm edit.  Make note of the added rotation of the torso.  An easily accomplished illusion by moving the shoulder with the arm.  Oh and the head rotates too.  It's really easy as long as you don't worry about the main form of the hair.  Bangs, ears, mouths, eyes and facial details move as a unit.  Simple as that.  As for the legs I edited them both.  What you had before was decent and featured pretty good arcs and spacing but I cleaned it up a bit.  The biggest and most pain in the ass thing to change was getting rid of one of the frames.  Took me awhile to figure out which was extra.

Also for fun I animated the hair.  The easiest way I've found to animate hair is to take it a spike at a time.  Animate one spike for the whole animation.  Hair goes up when the body goes down(or rather it stays up because it's lighter) and vice versa.  If you can make one spike animate well for the whole animation you're golden.  By doing that you set up how all the other spikes will react.  For example if Spike 1 is going down on one frame so will spike 2,3,4 etc and if Spike 2 is going up so will all the others.  It's that simple.  This also applies to clothing however you must take into account the weight of all your following objects.

One last piece of advice don't fully color in anything before it's fully animated.  It is such a pain in the butt to animate fully rendered figures.  If you made a cool sprite and fully colored it in a frame of hypothetical animation it is unwise to use that as one of your frames because you did not draw it to animate originally.

First you must consider how it will animate.
Second rough it out in simple forms don't include hair or clothing yet.
Third make sure the animation works and if it does base the hair and clothing off of it. 
Fourth fill out the figure for each frame. 
Fifth add the base color to every frame. 
And finally after that is done work on the lighting/shading and basically finish it up.

Umm thats it.  Oh and one last thing.  Feel free to learn from my edit but I don't advise you to take it and call it your own and not because I'm worried of credit issues it's more because if you did that you won't learn anything.  What I would like to see you do is use the edit and open it up in your animation program then draw a new figure right next to each frame and copy what I did.  Don't blindly copy, figure out what I did and why.  Remember to follow the steps above.  Baby steps

Good luck!