Hunter Character Concept (battle with pixel plaid)

[Wanyo]

I was talking with my friend and he wanted me to whip up a concept hunter sprite (as in shoot deer, drink beer style sterotype  ) for him. As I got further into the design he wanted me to give him some plaid/make him look a bit more like that style sterotype and I realized that I have no idea how to make a good looking plaid in low pixel count. I'm trying to keep it constrained into 16x32 (he originally wanted 16x16  ) I've been staring at this thing for a while and I think I'm losing the hat shape now vs what I want to accomplish.

Here's what I thus far: (please ignore the shoddy background, it felt more natural to draw on some sort of scenery vs the normal mid grey for me this time)

[Decroded]

Sorry, didn't even attempt to address your texture question 
Trying to texture a sprite this size is something I've given up on, favouring solid and more readable clusters that allow for colour contast to define form.
This seems to be the trend now but some smart-ass will probably come along and prove me wrong 


Mainly just wanted to address issues with readability and pose.
I thought I'd let him hang out of the bounding box but didn't end up needing to anyway.
May I ask why you need to keep him within those size limitations?
I'm curious if there's a technical reason because in my games I usually use a separate (and more consistently sized) collision mask from the sprite itself.

UPDATE:
Thought I'd try animating since I need to learn...

Trying to make his hat with the ear flaps are affected by recoil.

[Wanyo]

I totally understand your point, it was a concept my buddy came to me with to do a small hunter sprite in vein of the zelda/pokemon/whatever perspective and he wanted it in 16x16 so I pushed back a bit about it, haha! Then he wanted it to look more like that stereotype talking about the plaid and for some reason I thought it would be more do-able.  But the size limits he wanted was mainly why he was a bit square inside the bounding box. My very first concepts were a bit wider and taller even.

I love your edit, for some reason I didn't think to define out the little muscles in his arm and give him more of a pose. (maybe I should stop doing this right before bed, haha) and the animation is totally what I had in mind when I was spriting him though I'll probably add a little more muzzle flash if I can get him to that point. You even fixed my sad little bushes! 

I might try and at least move him to a more red-ish cap or something, depending on how far I can take the look with him hopefully I get some extra time at the office today to give it a shot!

[Decroded]

I totally understand your point, it was a concept my buddy came to me with to do a small hunter sprite in vein of the zelda/pokemon/whatever perspective and he wanted it in 16x16 so I pushed back a bit about it, haha! Then he wanted it to look more like that stereotype talking about the plaid and for some reason I thought it would be more do-able.  But the size limits he wanted was mainly why he was a bit square inside the bounding box. My very first concepts were a bit wider and taller even.

I love your edit, for some reason I didn't think to define out the little muscles in his arm and give him more of a pose. (maybe I should stop doing this right before bed, haha) and the animation is totally what I had in mind when I was spriting him though I'll probably add a little more muzzle flash if I can get him to that point. You even fixed my sad little bushes! 

I might try and at least move him to a more red-ish cap or something, depending on how far I can take the look with him hopefully I get some extra time at the office today to give it a shot!

Yeah I wasn't sure what kind of gun it was but if i had more time i'd made it a bit larger and maybe have a flash on his face and/or hat.
I thought about smoke too but thought it wouldn't be good for game if he needed to shoot again and smoke still animating.
Maybe you could have a quick smoke wisp as a separate sprite so when ur still it looks cool but when running again you just leave smoke behind, could look weird though especially if its too slow.

With the hat I thought you had something like this in mind.
http://www.harkilauk.co.uk/media/images/products/800/35549_180104323_f01.jpg
But yeah you could play with all sorts of colours.
Still no idea how you can texture something this size.
Maybe you could just draw a larger version of the character in the equipment screen where you can see more detail.

[Wanyo]

That's definitely the hat type I had in mind originally! Then after looking for some plaid stuff I came around this which is more/less same thing but plaid, lol! http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/415quQigICL._SX342_.jpg

So I tried out a bit of a red color and then attempted a bit of a implied plaid style. I don't love it but I don't hate it. I hope you don't mind me using your edit for a base for messing around with all this!


As for the gun I just intended it to be a standard hunting rifle that would probably read a bit better from the side than the front view. Something like this http://www.kimberamerica.com/images/rifles/family/model-84l/classic-select-grade.png

But I thought it would be fun to try out a couple different styles with thinner/thicker barrels, and a double barrel for fun. I think in the end the longer barrels loose some of his foot readability though.