[WIP] Mage sprite

[Medis]

Hello, im new to this forum and to pixel art, and i seek knowledge and help. Me and my mate are starting a game - something like contra, and i took the oath to create the art for it. It should be simple, easy to animate and so on. My first sprite is the main character and it looks like this:

But it doesnt look right for my eyes, and i dont know how to add more detail to it, while keeping it simple to animate  . Any advice? You are free to edit it with explanation what is done wrong. 

[Decroded]

Hi and welcome 

Its a good little sprite.
Without changing too much, here's some tips:

- Don't work against a white background. Go for mid-brightness grey or desaturated hue such as blue. This helps u find a good brightness balance for your sprite.
- For game sprites work on a canvas that is a multiple of 16px. This makes it much easier to compare things to the grid.
- Sprites need decent contrast and saturation as a base to make them pop. Once you have something decent to work with you can use the software's tools to increase saturation and contrast as you see I've done in the last frame.
- I blended in some red hue as blue sprites gets lost against blue sky backgrounds. If you'd prefer to keep the character blue then a trick is to only blend in some dark saturated red in the shadow areas and/or outlines and keep the light areas blue. This creates a strong separator from the background. Its good practice to get a bunch of game screenshots in png format and plop your sprite on top to see how he stands out.
- Don't over-detail or add texture just to fill space. Generally avoid filling areas with single-pixel noise textures as it just flattens the image.

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