The legs are all the same on all characters, with some edits here and there. That makes them stiff and edits of themselves. Try giving a different pose for them all, or at least redrawing each one of them.

The legs look weird also because they seem to be full frontal while the body is slightly turned to the right. The faces seem crammed in a bunch of your sprites and the use of solid outline inside the sprite may be getting in your way.

Black★Rock Shooter. Made and animated in Photoshop CS6 for the first time; flame was a slightly opaque layer, animation was handled with blur and smudge tools.


Isabelle, from Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

@Gors I see what you mean with the leg angling, I might go back and change them up a bit. Aside from the first one, each sprite was an edit off another so I could keep the style, proportions, etc consistent and reduce my overall workload. It's not like that isn't a common practice.
They are all based on their official reference art, which is why they all basically have the same pose.
Ref 1 Ref 2 Ref 3 Ref 4 Ref 5
It bothers me a little that people criticize my poses and stuff when most of the time I'm just trying to emulate the references. The pose is literally the least helpful thing to critique; saying something like "the pose is boring/stiff" is basically meaningless unless it's intended to be an interesting pose.
The faces probably seem crammed because of the hair. I pretty much only sprite girls who happen to have interesting hairstyles, so not really sure what else to say about that. Is there a way I can make them less crammed?

While you are correct, making sprites off a model sheet is indeed the proof that they are stiff (the poses in model sheets are stiff indeed)

But even if you edit the sprites, it's not just the leg height that changes, you can notice that some has thinner legs and some even have a different spacing between legs. The original poses show the character in a full frontal view but your sprite has 3/4 body and frontal legs which makes the problem even more blatant.

The feeling of cram comes from the exaggerated use of dark pixels in a small space. As you may know in pixelart, similar colors tend to 'merge' when seen in 1x, this includes the black line over the eye merging with the hair outline on their foreheads.

Anime styled sprites avoid that by using a lighter color for the hair outline, as seen here . I think you could benefit if you used a similar technique for it.

decided to mess around in a more simple style to figure out something i could easily animate if i ever wanted to make this stupid game idea



fully custom, two palettes included; one is higher contrast (two on the left), other is colors i used in my first sprite

i dont think i ever posted about this game idea here but there's not much to say yet lol. all i had before was some lazy edits of some vocaloid game with some scott pilgrim background to get a feel for what i thought i wanted
tl;dr you would play as some girl whose shadow is mean to her and things happen. cool part of the concept is the shadow would change position, size, and strength based on lighting in the area and you can attack using the shadow as a sort of extension to your body.

feedback very appreciated on this one bc i'm not particularly attached to it yet and haven't done small sprites in a suuuuuuper long time.

some frames i made to mess with so i can start adapting my rms engine for this game

stand (posted earlier), run, crouch, rising jump and falling jump

Is your shadow its own character? Cuz that'd be pretty cool.

(03-09-2015, 01:41 PM)Kelvin Wrote: Is your shadow its own character? Cuz that'd be pretty cool.

After a certain point in the game you basically gain control over it; when you attack it attacks, and its size, strength and position are based on the lighting around you.
But it does have its own personality, so it is kind of its own character.

I guess I never actually posted about this game, so I'll just copy/paste what I posted on MG.

Quote:

"Shut up! I've got people to save, OK? I don't have time for your trash talk."
"Can you save them, though? Feels to me like I'm a shadow of a doubt! Bwehehe..! You're no hero."
"For once, I'm going to PROVE YOU WRONG!"

As of yet unnamed characters from a game idea I've been sitting on for... probably around two years.
Edited from this sheet because I was roaming around TSR for a cool style to use for the game. Anything else I make of her will more than likely be custom.
And the reference I made in this thing because I literally cannot create characters from scratch LOL.

So far it's a very story-driven game; you play as this girl who is constantly demeaned and tormented by her living shadow. Only she (and other people with living shadows) can hear it talk, but it can physically interact with the world if wants or needs to. However, it is limited to the area in which her actual shadow is cast; if she is standing directly below a light it barely takes up any space, but if, for example, she's standing in front of a flood light projecting onto a far-off wall, it can get pretty big.
In terms of gameplay, it'll be a platformer - hoping to get something metroidvania-y with the outcome. You primarily control the girl, but after a certain point you also gain control over your shadow and can essentially have it act as a shield or weapon. Light sources will be an important factor in the gameplay; if there's too much or too little light you won't be able to use the shadow, but you can also do things like abuse lamps to give yourself massive range on the shadow's attacks.

Obviously I'm not using the edited sprites anymore, but you get the point.

the lack of Aikuro Mikisugi sprites in this thread is disturbing

pls fix kthxbye

(03-09-2015, 10:29 PM)DaHog Wrote: the lack of Aikuro Mikisugi sprites in this thread is disturbing

pls fix kthxbye

well

now i know what i'm doing for april fools

(03-09-2015, 10:29 PM)DaHog Wrote: the lack of Aikuro Mikisugi sprites in this thread is disturbing

pls fix kthxbye

I find commenting such things more disturbing. even if it's a joke, don't demand things: people who don't know will feel free to do the same to the others and that's the type of behavior we're trying to avoid, okay?

I'll let it slide for now because I feel it's a joke; but I need to point that out.

simple little sprite of bill cipher from gravity falls

inkling from splatoon

pose based on the amiibo

been doing a lot of crusade stuff and school is wrapping up so i haven't had time to do much but here's a quick little baymax



7 colors

Baymax seems to be leaning on his back, you may want to fix that

als othe 7 colors seem overkill, I can't see the shading on my screen.

(05-03-2015, 06:50 AM)Gors Wrote: Baymax seems to be leaning on his back, you may want to fix that

als othe 7 colors seem overkill, I can't see the shading on my screen.

swapped out one of the lighter grays for a darker gray i was already using, and made the pinkish shade darker

also moved his legs around a bit

hopefully that's a bit better