[C+C] Platformer Female Main Character

[Nyxation]

I am working on a small personal project that will be a platformer. I've been designing the main character for a while now. Honestly, this is my first real foray into the world of pixel art and while I've admired many artists and their pixel art, I've never felt like I had the creativity and talent to make it work for me.

As a note, I am using the NES Palette currently for personal preference.

Here was my original design:


This was basically an edit of Curly Brace from Cave Story.
After looking around a bit more for inspiration, I got some ideas and try to hash out something else:


The first is without the bandana, while the second is with.

Other Revisions:


Latest Edit:


I'm curious as to what people's opinions are on these so far. I know that by using the NES Palette, I am limiting myself what I can do. Originally I had planned to make everything be NES compliant, but then I fudged it and added a fourth color in my first sprite. Then I said screw it to the hardware/sprite limitations and only limit myself by colors for the time being.

Thanks!

[8bitbeard]

Oh, I really like where this seems to be heading. And Cave Story is a great reference when doing pixelart, this game is really great.
I must say I am a big fan of limitations, even if they are totally artificial - setting yourself strict boundaries helps to focus on the essence of your work rather than beeing able to do "anything"; there is no thing such "limitless" anyway 
Anyway.
I like the pose and most of the colors you have there, really like the dynamic in the legs and how the body looks round with the center line you have there.
My 2 main ptroblems are:

The spikiy hair thing that looks like horns, I really do not know what to read in that.
The bandana is WAY too dominant. Unless this piece of clothing is essential to the character, I'd tune it down in terms of color and amount of pixels by a great deal.

[Nyxation]

A few other people seemed to have trouble reading the top of the hair. It's meant to be hair that has been pulled back into a ponytail but then splayed out to both sides. I'm not really sure what to do to it at this moment to make it more readable.

The bandana, while part of the character I was considering implementing, was also a way for me to cover up a lot of the open hair. I'm not liking how the hair looks currently as it feels open and flat with all kinds of wrong shading.

Shading overall seems to be my big problem, as the jacket's shading, or mismatch of shading, needs works.

Thank you for the input. I greatly appreciate it!

[8bitbeard]

The bandana, while part of the character I was considering implementing, was also a way for me to cover up a lot of the open hair. I'm not liking how the hair looks currently as it feels open and flat with all kinds of wrong shading.

Confront your demons! 

[Nyxation]

Determined to make this bandana work, I've adjusted it so it has some shading along the sides. Also added in small shading in the jacket, pants, and touched up the face (including a mouth).

Still not sure what to do with the hair. I tried a few different styles but nothing that I liked yet. Anyway, here's the edit and I've updated the first post:

[piffany]

If you could post a larger sketch of what you're trying to convey, it might be easier for other people to provide feedback regarding readability.

At first I thought the hair were antlers. really cute antlers, mind.

[Nyxation]

If you could post a larger sketch of what you're trying to convey, it might be easier for other people to provide feedback regarding readability.

At first I thought the hair were antlers. really cute antlers, mind.

Do you mean what I'm aiming for or a bigger version of the sprite? If you mean what I'm aiming for, I don't really have any kind of sketch. I'm basing it off of my girlfriend, who has dyed red hair, usually pulled back into a large splayed out ponytail, and almost always wears bandanas of various colors.

If you're meaning a bigger version of the sprite, I thought that we were supposed to link our raw sizes and could click to resize accordingly. Though, right now it does come out rather fuzzy. Is there something I'm missing here or would it be best to just link a pre-2x scaled version?

[PypeBros]

If you could post a larger sketch of what you're trying to convey, it might be easier for other people to provide feedback regarding readability.

At first I thought the hair were antlers. really cute antlers, mind.

I think she (that's she, right ?) means something not necessarily pixel art, but depicting your character, such as a pencil-and-paper sketch.

(...) I thought that we were supposed to link our raw sizes and could click to resize accordingly.

True. The only thing that makes your little sprites fuzzy is the pink background you use. With that size and that that selection of colour, you're much better to pick a more neutral BG to work with (hint: theme of this board is made of neutral colours ) , whatever your coder pretends the BG color needs to be.

[Nyxation]

I don't have any pen and paper drawing abilities outside of stick figures (and trust me, those aren't worthy of being called even mediocre).

I use ASE for creating my sprites, and currently I have the magenta set as my transparent color. When I'm editing it acts as a transparent, however, when I export to PNG it will show the Magenta. This isn't an issue in programming, as I use that color for transparencies, but it is bothersome for posting here.

I've updated the first post with a gif instead to have the transparency work here.

[piffany]

What I mean is... based on your sprite, I assume you're trying to convey something of this nature:



However, you might have something completely different in mind. So it might help to show us what you're going for with a larger image (I scaled up your image 10x then drew over it)