[WIP][NEWBIE] Modern Soldier

[Singularity]

Greetings. I'm a new poster, but I have visited this site several times thus far and I wished I discovered it sooner.

Comments and Critiques are always welcome and more than likely needed. My latest pixel project is for a 2-D screen scroller game my brother and I are constructing.

This first image is the standing position of the soldier character, with a parallel image in a larger spectrum of color to reveal, the pixel changes. To create a stylized fabric effect, I started with the main shadows and added little variation afterwards.


This is a screen shot, not to be ripped from, but to demonstrate the inspiration for this a character:


I know I already got pretty far with this but even changes that require complete do-overs is good. (like I said I found this place a little late) Please tell me what you think. Thanks. 

[Indigo]

Please do not save your work as JPG.  Use a lossless file format such as PNG or GIF.

-Dan

[Singularity]

Thanks, it's all fixed. I just noticed photobucket convert .bmp's to .jpg or something.

[Hyrule_SwordsMan]

If that's the actual size of your sprite this project will be dead in 23hs, 32m, 15.4 s
I mean, you'll get mad to animate that and add details.
I recommend you using a smaller size

[Indigo]

This is at 32 colors total and you're using an entire 16 color row on just a single ramp.  this is quite overkill and is actually giving you a brushed CG look (and not in a good way).  you could probably cut this down to 16 total and be fine...maybe 24

[Singularity]

I realize the image is rather large but I can always shrink it more gracefully than expand. More than likely It will be half this size when I use it. 

Alright, including white, this should be 24 different colors for the whole thing. I need to go to work though so I'm posting my progress. It does make it much easier to work with.

[sharprm]

I wrote the longest post explaining what the centre of mass is and how it is to the right of his feet, and why he
will topple over - but it timed out, so you'll just have to google it if you care  . Make him lean back more or have his feet more apart (you need his centre of mass between the two points where the ground pushes up on him). This will improve how the piece looks.

[Singularity]

Alright I think I fixed it... I ended up shortening his legs too.
Does this look better?

[sharprm]

Better. Something I see now is that his head's position and size is incorrect. The head should be more to his right and maybe his right shoulder more inwards. My knuckles are about as long as my chin to nose, whereas your hand is much larger than his face. Try searching the board for some guides about head size vs. body length (theres some rule floating around that its 7 or 8 heads to the body). That might also get the head right.

[tocky]

Dynamics. Your dude does not look terribly heroic, but it's not hard to do - it is basically all in the stance. I would have him stand with legs apart, elbows out, knees bent, basically ready to start shooting or running or whatever. If he's not meant to be heroic, maybe disregard that - but he is currently not really showing any character at all, see here:
http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/characters/chara1.htm

(I don't know if it's actually appropriate to have him stand around with the gun cocked like in my example, but I will admit that my gun knowledge is basically nonexistant.)

Besides that, you're still using far more colours than you're actually using, if that makes sense.