When you say "Captain Falcon", some primal super smash brothers urge flares up in the back of my mind, and it screams "FALCON PUNCH" as loud as it possibly can. So loud, actually, that I can't help some of that scream from the back of my mind escaping out my mouth. See, the Captain Falcon of my mind, the one I know of, is one prone to dynamic things, such as screaming.
The Falcon you're portraying, though technically pixelled with some strength, seems to lack the energy and attitude that the character I know embodies.
And the root of that issue (if you consider it an issue, of course. My speculation here is primarily based upon my own opinion
)... the root of that issue lies in your use of organic lines, as opposed to dynamic ones.
Dynamic lines tend to be straight, tend to be angular, and like diagonals. Those crazyass lines you see flying around in the clichee anime "flying through the air about to slash someone in half" are dynamic lines. The harshly sloped triangles on Captain Falcon's... sunglasses? Facemask? are dynamic shapes. Generally, dynamic shapes or dynamic lines or dynamic poses are things that convey ENERGY and FORCE and IMMEDIATE DANGER.
In contrast, organic shapes... well, I always think of water balloons. No matter what you do to those dang things, they seem lazy and droopy and heavily affected by gravity. Organic shapes are usually very curvaceous, smooth and soft. Like those loveable slimes that usually get tossed into RPGs, or a whole lot of plant life, and probably a lot of the things designed for "ergonomic comfort" or some other pretentious name, such as your mouse or your remote control. I had a remote control shaped like a foot once. It was very organic, not a corner on the thing.
Aaaanyways. I'd also suggest considering playing about with contrast somewhere in your travels and tweaking things so his expression isn't blank and symmetrical. It doesn't even have to be much, I just barely tweaked his lips so he's got some kind of a sneer going on now, even that is better than a blank, emotionless face.
Two more things. Check out Skurwy's wonderous thread (the chick's face up top) and drop some near-white highlights in there. It seems to be a pixelation tradition to have near-white highlights on a face, and coincidentally it seems to work.
All that being said, a very solid first post. Thanks for coming out of lurking
