Sheexy and Faalstar learn to walk (platforming animations)

[Sheexy]

I'm trying to get two characters a friend and I made up to the point where I can finally work on another game I'll probably never finish starring them.


Here are their walk cycles with and without arms (any differences in the body or legs in the two animations is just an oversight by me). This is the first time I've done a walk cycle with more than three animations, so I need some tips onto how to improve it.  I dunno how I ended up with six frames, but I think it works?
Also I'm using V.20 of Arne's palette because it is beautiful.


UPDATED WALKS--


Sheexy- His belt is supposed to look kind of heavy

Faalstar- He wears Hakama pants


I think their hips might swivel too much, and their belts have given me a bit of trouble. 
I dunno if their arm movement is right either.
Could I get some critiques on these?

Is Faal's hair bouncing ok?  I don't quite know what to do for it.  He uses hair gel that gets it really stiff (not an excuse XD, is actually part of the story).
Sheexy's sand guard thing doesn't move on his walk cycle because I couldn't find a way to get it to move subtly.  It's made out of really heavy fabric, so how much motion should it have?
Also, do you think it would be ok to leave it static (and maybe make Faal's hair static), just so it doesn't get distracting?
When I do the running animations I'm gonna have the sand guard and hair moving a lot, but first I want to get their walk down.


Here are their falling animations, some help on these would be great too. (Sheexy's face shading is messed up, forgot to fix x_x; )

And just for some laughs I'll let you all see how the characters have evolved over the years.

The old ones are so bad I don't even want to talk about them XD
Around 2007 is when I found Pixelation and started kind of studying what goes into sprites, but it wasn't until around a month ago that I really sat down and read what people were saying about stuff like color and animating.  The characters really lacked any personality in the sprites until now.

[Joseph]

You've improved, there's no doubt, but I can still see plenty of room for even further improvement.
I took a stab at it:

[Sheexy]

I messed with the hands/arms and the belts on the walks, I think I got rid of the hip movement problem.


I decided to mess around and try what you're talking about Joseph.

The second Sheexy is almost a direct copy of what you did, just using Arne's palette, and the third one is a sort of mix of the orignal, yours and a few other little things.

I don't really want to change the palette because I really like the colors in Arne's, and I don't know if I like how they'd end up on Faal (he's there testing the brown, yellow and dark purple color)

Yours looks really really good though.
I've gotta decide if I want to go with a style more like that, or what I was going for originally.  I like the sharper look of the original, and the original looks better zoomed in I think. (That third one is really growing on me)  I should have said I was going for kind of a cartoony cel shaded like look.
Definitely going to keep working with yours in mind.  You showed me how to shade and highlight a lot of parts I wasn't sure about.  And I debated adding the little toes forever, thanks for helping that side win XD