Getting back into sprites

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

mh.
well. we are entitled to think and say that there are things "wrong" with your sprites, it's up to you to doubt your work and tweak it. if you've posted your work here, it's so it can be exposed to our feedback. this feedback doubtlessly will be biased in the sense that we're telling you what we'd do if they were our sprites. this kind of information is practical, as it widens the view you have on your work because you might have never considered what others may suggest to you. if you don't like us or our honest feedback, then you can go, nobody has ever stopped you from leaving.

to be honest, i think that in both of your sprites you have issues on anatomy (especially the bottom half of the torso downwards) and pose according to weight distribution: i say this because i have the impression you treat your characters as if they were on one plane and not in a space.

using blocks of black, or any other value/colour/tone, will eat away at definition and in some cases at form. personally i don't think it's a case of using a more or less pure black that is an issue, but the amount you use.
example:

breaking it down, the most important thing is contrast. i could've done this with desaturated colours too. i've noticed that more saturated tones tend to work better with pure black- this is certainly due to their purity.

i don't understand what you're saying about prettiness and originality. :I