First Time posting. Need another pair of eyes...

[Resistor]

So I've been doing pixel art for about a year now. I'm working on an ambitious project (a pixelated virtual world) I originally set out to make something like an MMO legend of zelda so my character initially looked like this:



But after doing a bunch of reading, research, and pondering I decided to implement male and female genders. I also wanted to add a bit more detail to the characters. Take a look at the result:



My question is how does this look overall. How are the colors and anatomical proportions? How are the general gestures of the poses? are they reading well to you? I've worked on the redesign the past few days and I'd just like another pixel-pusher's opinion on it. I love my wife but sometimes I think she tells me everything I do is good and if my mother has taught me anything it's that family members are rarely objective.

Thanks! Oh... and please don't go easy. But at the same time if you really do like it let me know why and what it is you do like about it.

[cirpons]

Muscle babies?
The only problem I have are the bubble heads.
Actually the lighting inconsistency is also bugging me a bit, like if you look at the first picture, the mirrored figures that face right have the light coming from the right, while the others have it coming from the left, so instead of mirroring you could redraw it. But that is just a nitpick, most wont even notice it.

[ErekT]

Hello.

The anatomy looks accurate enough to me for it's style. Lots of banding that I tried to clean up where the green arrow's at (image 2&3). Banding is when you have parallel lines of different-colored pixels breaking off at the same point. I also tweaked the color ramp somewhat. Darker colors should usually be cooler and less saturated than brighter ones.



Hope that helps

EDIT:
Oh, and you can post images in 1x scale. There's a script to let you zoom in on images by clicking on them.

[Resistor]

Yeah there is a "muscle baby" look to the Male. Thanks for the suggestions, ErekT. Your new color scheme looks great. I'd like to post an update in a bit with the suggested changes.

[Yngar]

I don't know if its just me but it looks like the heads on the ones facing northeast look a bit smaller than the rest, especially the female. Also the nosemouths on the side view don't seem to match up with the rest. The chins on the ones facing southeast look a lot more human than the side view ones.

The bodies look really good, well done on the anatomy from the neck down.

[tim]

I'm not a big fan of the muscle baby look. It's so overused… There's even a entire topic about this plague here :
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=7301.0