Need help - eyes/mouths in small sprites

[Akzidenz]

I've been working on creating smaller sprites lately, and I'm getting decent at it, but I'm having a shitload of trouble making decent eyes & mouths. At the very most, I have a 4x4 space per eye - but most of the time it's less, 2x3, 3x3. I've looked through a ton of old SNES/GBS/PS1 sprites, but all of them just seem to have the same (or similar) 2x2 eyes. And mouths are even more difficult.

So, does anyone have any suggestions? What do you typically do for eyes/mouths at a small size? Any examples you can point me towards?

This is what I'm working on at the moment. These are (poorly) AA'ed outlines. The one on the right (the furry one) I'm happy with - but the one on the left (the fish), I can't seem to get right. The eyes just don't have the same life that they do in the sketch. The mouth is also a bitch on the fish.

Original sketch (again, not mine, the work of my friend/partner at alexmadrigal.blogspot.com):


Pixels:


Any other advice/suggestions are totally welcome as well - but I'm trying to focus on the eyes.

[AlexHW]

when it comes to small spaces, dont get too picky about an outline/linework. There's only so many things you can do with two or so tones. When you begin to color it, and adding more tones, you will have much more options in order to find the right look for the smaller details because the linework itself can be colored, and altered.

nice sketches by your friend, the characters are very cool

[.TakaM]

I think they eyes look pretty good for lineart, the lips could be a bit better if you had more tones to work with on the AA

speaking of the AA, you're using a pretty faint Grey considering you're using it like its 50% black in most places

[Darien]

Are far are you planning to take this?  Because if you are going to color them, keep in mind that you won't really benefit from getting the mouth and eyes perfect at this stage, because you can do a lot more with varying shades to suggest subpixels. (EDIT: yeah what they said)

Otherwise, this is my attempt at a fix:



I think a large part of the character is the way his right eye is smaller than his left, which I tried to suggest but replacing a single black pixel with gray.  Not sure if it worked.

[Conzeit]

you'll have to do a lot of thinking about basic shapes and the relation between lighting and volume to get the most out of the finer details once you start shading.

what are you doing making outlines anyway? much of the fun of this medium is a sketch can become a final piece pretty fast.

[Helm]

Yes. Concepting can be good, but don't go overboard with detail outline work. Just block out shapes and start with the lights and colors.

[Akzidenz]

Screwy process can be attributed to me being really new to this.

The responses are helping me figure that kind of stuff out - thanks for taking the time to look. I'll try not to work so backwards next time.