Orc Fighter needs improving

[xbogx]

this is my first fighter sprite, used various street fighter sprites as reference
how can i improve it?

[Lurdiak]

Well, first of all, your color palette is too limited: your darkest green is not that much darker than your lightest green, so there's no real contrast, so that makes your guy look a lot flatter, since it doesn't look like light is hitting him anywhere. It's especially glaring in a style similar to Street Fighter Alpha, that relies on low details and high contrast.

I darkened his darkest green and lightened his lightest green, as well as lightening the lightest part of his shirt and fiddling around with the shadows a little, just to give you an idea. It still needs a lot of work but you can tell how much of an improvement just using more contrasting colors makes.

[AdamAtomic]

hey xbogx welcome to pixelation!  This is a (all things considered) great first post.  One thing to note is you do not need to post a 2x version of your sprite, as we have a javascript that handles click zooming built in to the boards.

As for the actual sprite, it would definitely be good to do some more anatomy study, even if its Street Fighter anatomy.  You've got definite construction problems throughout that can only be address by looking at references, and practicing the pose in the mirror!

Something you will here a lot on pix is that you need to mix your ramps more.  In the case of a fighting game sprite this might not be as true as it would be otherwise, if you're intending to use palette swapping in game or something.  BUT, as an artist, you're definitely going to want to mix your hues up a lot more.  Don't think of it as "These 4 colors are for his pants" "These 3 are for his skin" anymore!  This makes your work disjointed and unappealing.  I recommend poking around on Pixeljoint or in the Featured Thread area of pixelation and look at how varied color selections can be for different surfaces.  You can also use the eyedropper tool in various applications to sample colors in photos (not for choosing colors, but just to see how many REAL colors there are on what you think might be a uniformly colored surface.

Good luck!