[WIP] seraphim traitor (proportions/pose)

[Glitchcraft]

Ok, so I already know that there are a lot of problems with these. They are noisy, sloppy and the color ramps could use some work. I'm still in the concept stage. I work in a weird order so my workflow could probably use a makeover as well.

First off, this is the player sprite for a Zelda 2/Castlevania like side scroller. My main issue is the pose. I've never really had issues with this since my proportions have always been exaggerated and unrealistic, but now that I'm designing art for a side scroller, I have to worry about animation and readability.

I have always been really weird about side sprites. Even in top down/isometric games, I have always disliked the full on side view where you can only see 1 eye. But I'm also trying to avoid the whole Mario 1, body facing the screen, head turned thing. Though, with my lack of experience, it might be a little too hard to pull off the in between perspective.

I don't know where to put the left arm (our left). It seems like it should be within the bounds of the body, but something seems off about it. I'm also not sure if I want the weapon to always be showing since I'm sure it's harder to animate a character walking with a scythe/sword than it is an empty handed sprite.

From an aesthetic point of view, I think I'm really pushing the level of detail to its limits, or maybe even beyond that, for the sprite size (around 50x25). The character is an angel who became corrupted and tried to kill all humanity, so I'm going for a tarnished, grimey "used to be white" vibe with the colors. I wanted a lot of gold/metal to give off a holy paladin vibe since the demons also wear cloaks/hoods.

I used dithering for texture to attempt a chain mail like texture for the cowl/poncho thing.

The concept art is somewhat in order and it shows the process of cutting colors from the palette and finding in between tones. Rather than doing a shadow color for the gold, I chose to just use the dark blue/green color I used for the hood/cloak shadow.  I feel like the green shadow allows me to use a vibrant gold highlight while still having that tarnished feel.

I'm going for a very dark and gritty atmosphere while maintaining contrast and diversity. I guess I don't have a specific question and what I really want is opinions on which particular concepts you like most, what can be done to improve them and what can be cut entirely. Don't mind the terrible scythe as it's just placeholder. I just really need an extra opinion or else I'm gonna just obsess over this sprite until the end of time. Sorry for the disjointed nature of this text. I'm multitasking and I've been typing this in segments over the last hour and a half lol.

[MysteryMeat]

when in doubt, default to silhouette. For most of these the arm isn't visible as an arm at a glance thanks to it not sticking out enough in the overall work, and as a result it takes a bit of looking to recognize what's going on. Ideally you'd want to avoid that.
Normally contrasting colors can be used to help with silhouette formation, but as your character is using a more muted color pallete here I'd reccomend tweaking the pose until everything is more visibly clear for what it is.

Good example of what I mean can be found in Mark of the Ninja


Note how their posture is clear, yet aggressive, and arms are distinctly seperate from the body. This makes it easy to tell at a glance both the bounds of your character as well as their general shape. Try to play around with it some more until you can get some clearer shapes in there, it might take a redesign or two to get a solid base to work off.