Managing noise in small soldier sprites

[oxysoft]

I made these two soldiers consisting of two stances.



They don't look too bad I think but I can't help but feel like the sprites are too noisy.
How to do you represent these small details at such a small scale without creating unnecessary noise?

[Drazelic]

Avoid hard outlines within the sprites; use selective outlining to reduce the 'hardness' of the sprite's edges and rely on value and color rather than linework to distinguish between individual parts within a sprite.

In a tiny sprite, you've only got like twenty pixels of clearance. If you want to draw an arm in, that's two pixels you have to spend on the lines. If you want to have things like pants and helmets and arms, you have to spend a lot of your pixel clearance on lineart which you could be spending on value blocks instead.

[Probo]

simplify the shading, represent simpler shapes. the way the highlights are arranged on the helmet and closest knee, and that little one under his chin all add noise to my eye because theyre trying to represent too much information.

heres a quick edit, see if you like it

[Decroded]

Avoid hard outlines within the sprites; use selective outlining to reduce the 'hardness' of the sprite's edges and rely on value and color rather than linework to distinguish between individual parts within a sprite.

In a tiny sprite, you've only got like twenty pixels of clearance. If you want to draw an arm in, that's two pixels you have to spend on the lines. If you want to have things like pants and helmets and arms, you have to spend a lot of your pixel clearance on lineart which you could be spending on value blocks instead.

Well said 

Some small variations...