One of my first pixel art sprites and could use some help making it perfect

[Pangolin]

Hello, everyone. This is one of my first pixel art pieces and it would be awesome if I could get some advice on how I should approach making it look fantastic. This is a character made for a game and as such, I need the four views of the character (up, down, left, right). I have included all of those but the one that really sticks out as weird to me is the up and down versions. Those were the last two. Any advice is much appreciated and I hope to someday create something as awesome as what I have been seeing in here lately.



Thank you

[eishiya]

Your left/right versions are practically front-facing, so a down view seems superfluous.

Is this for a side view game, or an RPG/from-above view game? The sprites seem to be drawn as if they're for a side view game, but side view games rarely need front/back sprites, just left/right. These two views have different "requirements" so I'd rather be sure what you're going for before I try to give you much feedback.

The folds on the cape in the back/up version look out of place. All the other sprites have no folds, and the folds themselves don't make a lot of sense. Fabric follows what's underneath, and hangs in loose waves when there's nothing underneath. A cape rests on the shoulders and upper back. In addition to that, there would be folds where the fabric is gathered, such as where the cape's clasp is. In general, try to think of fabric folds in terms of tension points - places where something is exerting force on the fabric. Folds tend to radiate to/from such points. Andrew Loomis's "Figure Drawing For All Its Worth" has a nice section on drawing fabric that I recommend reading. You can find the book free online (it's out of print).

[Pangolin]

oh its a "from above" game.

[eishiya]

In that kind of view, we should be seeing the character more from above, not just from the front. We should be seeing more of the top of their head, the tops of their shoulders. The belt would probably have some curviature since from slightly above we'd see it curve around the torso.
Here's a little edit to show you what I mean:

Doesn't that look more like we're seeing the character from slightly above rather than from the front?
You could probably push this even more by making the body and legs even shorter to suggest more foreshortening. You could also have more curvature on the belt and on other elements. RPG view usually needs a higher camera than what I've done in my edit.

I recommend getting this perspective/view stuff sorted out before you move on to shading. It's much easier to focus on that when you're just working with the shapes.

If you want to encourage people to make edits, post your work at 1x, don't pre-zoom. It's a lot easier to copy+paste a 1x image into an image editor for editing. People can always zoom your work by clicking on it, that's a feature of the forum.

[CFKaligula]

Here's an example of how the 4 views should look like


Your left,right and down sprites are all looking in the same direction, down. You should really look at some references to figure out how the views should look like.