A noobs new Fakey-mon

[Shawn]

Short answer? They're not good.

Long answer? Your lineart is jagged, your color choices are kinda bad (need more contrast) and your shading is unrealistic.

I don't want to derail a topic but I just want to say that THIS POST is what NOT to do when criticizing art. Starting with the blunt sentence of "They're not good" is in no way helpful to the artist or even your own post. It's just an extra sentence you added for the sake of looking like a longer post.

The "long answer"? It's a single damn sentence and it doesn't elaborate on anything. The lineart is jagged, yeah ok. Can you continue with that thought? Where specifically is it jagged, where should he be refining it the most, and what can he do to fix it? The colour choices need more contrast. Yes, that's true but again, what can he do to fix this? You provide no reference or tips as to how to make the colours properly contrasted or anything and again you just flat out started with saying they're "kinda bad". Finally, THE SHADING remark was even less helpful than the last two for the same reasons; lack of reference, tips, advice, edits or anything. You didn't mention why it wasn't realistic, how to fix it or even acknowledge the lack of depth in the sprites. If you want to criticize something at least put in the effort to guarantee the person has something to go off of. You gave them NOTHING to work with other than the fact that his sprites are "bad."

Sorry about that.

Personally, if they really are intended to be fakemon, I'd recommend looking at official pokemon sprites a little more analytical. Observe the colours, structure and poses, then find a couple official sprites similar to what you want yours to be like and use them as reference, for colour, shape and the like. I don't feel like being in depth myself(hypocrite, I know), but they're honestly not that bad. The first design is quite nice and given some proper refinement, it can look like a nice pokemon.

Also, can someone suggest a better program than freaking MS Paint?

MS paint has nothing wrong with it. I still use it as my primary program for spriting, it has everything I need. :/

If you really want to use a different program though, I'd recommend Graphics Gale. It has built in pallete editing tools and an animator that allows you to edit each frame and see your animations while you work on them.