Practice makes Perfect

[Proton]

I decided to make some sort of practice thread to get both a better understanding of spriting terms and to get better at spriting itself.
C+C greatly appreciated.

You posted these and I kept skipping over them.

Since you're on the tree now, I'll make it short.

Remember your light source for his left arm's shoulder pad.
Try to actually give him hands. The sprite's essentially done, so you have nothing to lose by editing it and giving him some real hands.
If you're making a more HD version, try detailing the face. It's a great way to practice bigger areas when you've got the idea of the head's size and position already there.

And stylistically for practice, ignore the rule of only adding 1-2 colours to the NES palette and
give it some flair to make it your own palette.

White to grey?
Why not white to blue?
purple? pink?
Even a reddish tinge works with the fact he's red.

I do not know how each Link got to 16 colours.
Really doesn't need to be so high for such tiny images.
For his tunic and hat, you really don't need 4 shades. It's a small area and you barely use contrast. Try getting rid of the lightest one, and use selout on the outline, using the hat's second darkest shade.

These are small, so animating them would be good practice.
Make him standing still, getting impatient,
something small, but still giving it life.

Here's an example of optimizing your palette, making it 11 colours.
The red bomb is pillowshaded, but the blue, not as much, but still exists.

The only thing really standing out about this,
is nothing.
It doesn't stand out, as the dark palette is really bland.
Doesn't pop, doesn't attract the eye.
I think it looked better in the Card thread, when Zadaben made it purple and yellow.
Not only are those vibrant colours, but also contrasting colours. They go extremely well together, and make the character "pop."
A simple, beginner design technique that always works.