How can I make these sprites 'acceptable'

[Ton]

I like the 4th mask the most.

[Jaharl]

I also like the third one in the second row.

[Xander]

Yeah, the 4th mask is better.

[Solid_Spy]

Ok, I updated the shapes and color pallets as requested, using the 4th option.

Thank you for the help, I personally do think it looks a lot better now.

[Gors]

the main problem is that you sprited a good idle sprite, but the rest of the animations are edited from it, which makes for a bad animation. This is more blatant in the mask remove animation, where its head gets skewed instead of rotating with perspective in mind.

Don't be afraid of redrawing new frames for animations. It will be tricker yes for sure, but the end product will be leagues better than just editing the base pose further.

[Silversea]

I generally like how these guys look -- but agree some details could be refined.

I don't know if it has been mentioned (running out of time sorry) but the flower bush on the spy guy/petal guy or whatever it was called seems really messy to me (even in the new version sorry). For something like that you want the individual flowers to be relatively clear from each other, but here it is very clustered and smudged. I say this mostly because the rest of the sprite seems to be going for the "clear, defined" look, an the flower bush is not meeting that expectation.

It is a bit harder as you don't seem to be going for outlines, but I would still use some sort of outline to suggest the flower outlines within the bush, doesn't have to be a complete border.

One point for advice, the red centers of the flower should probably be same size. I get you want the flowers angled but in such a small sprite you have to go for clarity, and that might mean having most of th flowers facing the same way.