The VG Resource

The way the gun moves, but his right hand on the trigger doesn't move in a corresponding fashion, makes it look more like the barrel is swiveling rather than being solidly attached to the trigger handle. Also, his right arm doesn't really move at all while reloading, which feels out of place with the rest of the really smooth animation.

I see what you mean on the arm and I've tried to fix up the finger, I'll fix up the arm next

He should bring the shotgun back down again before pumping it. It makes the recoil look weird and reduces the impact the way it just stops. It needs to be more fluid, rather than just stop moving suddenly.

whenever you comment you always diagnose a problem I couldn't quite pin myself, I'll have his hand drop and the gun fall into his hand, a little bit of a bounce and then reload.

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given it a go and I think the reload is looking a lot better

Much nicer. Looks really smooth. Good job.

A little leg movement, for instance for the recoil, could give a bit more life to the animation.
There's little to no transition from the idle to the shooting cycle, maybe you could suggest aiming or bringing the arms forward, some kind of movement that will help us understand that this character has decided to shoot.

the legs will animate separate to the body so the player can run and shoot at the same time without my having to copy paste run cycles all over the sheet.
as for the shooting, after a little playing around with timing and frames, I think there may have actually been too much of a transition. Animation wise the raising of the gun had no weight and just felt stiff, gameplay wise it would create a delay between pressing a button and firing.

I cleaned up some timing and eliminated the transition into shooting, instead Sprocket just shoots.

bit of a cleaned up sheet and timing as well as new legs

Felt like actually trying some NES spec 8-bit sprites!
The entire POSSIBLE colour selection above, just below it the 4 pallets (NES only capable of handling 4 pallets at a time), below that the sprites and ofc a sample.

Hello I sorry but the NES has one predefined system palette with 64 colours (~54 usable) that cannot be changed :-)
(By the way no 8-bit colour depth as the NES uses colours based on YPbBr instead of RGB)

Thus, your "entire possible colour selection" needs to be replaced, here, have a wikipedia:


Background tiles can have their own four palettes so you have two sets of four palettes with four colours (one being alpha). I think one sprite palette has no alpha but don't ask meeeee :-)
This intel may be wrong (the bg pals not using their first entries sounds weird) but it's what I heard / read, I never worked with the NES (never had one, either (but played on one, once)).

The way you shaded the back makes it flat, I'd have used a specular spot instead of banding the line (but I guess that's what I always do haha) :>

I guess I'll do more research next time I start running my mouth on 8-bit machines rather than ranting about what I think I already know XD
Thanks for the info, always nice to learn something
I never had a NES either I grew up on Sega's
On the subject of the alpha foreground tiles had 3 colours per pallet and 1 that was always transparent, background had no need for this transparency so I'd imagine that'd be free, if not it'd likely be taken by black

better?
I'm likely to change the lighting around the eye.

Update, bit of a pallet rearranging, a background, tree tiles and a Gem which comes in blue and red.

EDIT: forgot to upload sample

another update,
font, mushroom, meat, spikes, torches, HUD

for anyone curious, I will not be making these a game but I'm making them as if I were.

I've decided to play around some more with NES limitations, I'm quite enjoying the challenge

the ground tiles are the rock tiles from the original but edited. So they should work with other pallets for all sorts of terrain,
The Character is used in 2 different pallets 1 for the good guys 1 for bad guys, simple enough. I also quite like the effect of the contrast.

another random piece I'm making just for the sake of experimenting with styles

based on a game I was going to make for someone, we fell out but the designs were all my own so I've hung on to the idea,
basicly,
Tragedy strikes and a man begs the moon for the power to avenge, he is given the power with the catch that when he is done the moon keeps his body as its own, he is to hunt down the monsters that caused the tragedy, doing so gains their powers,
enemies were to be based around horror archetypes, scarecrow, crow, vampire, werewolf, and a few misc designs of my own.