Beat em Up sprites

[Knick1225]

he looks sad in a 'man, it sucks to live' way. (which is okay if you intended him to look like that, notice that this is also important for characterization of your sprites)

As for the sprite itself... it doesn't look like you understand the techniques behind everything you did. Honestly it looks like you placed those pixels this way because 'the other pixelartist do it this way'. Which isn't inherently bad, but it can be without any basis.

For example, you completely forgot to outline the hair near his left eye. It would be okay if you were aiming for sel-out (a technique where you shade the outlines in order to make it more 'tridimensional'), but the effect is not achieved due to lack of understanding.

The hais is weird also. I know that anime usually has over-the-top hairdos and spikes everywhere. But the spikes are laid out in an understandable fashion, and I'll show you:


(shamelessly grabbed from google images)

As you can see, the third guy from first row has hair in spikes, however the spikes are laid out over his head in an even fashion, as not to make it lopsided, or unbalanced. This goes for all other famous anime characters. The spike is meant to be a group of hair: instead of drawing hair one string by string, you just draw groups of it, which is less tedious.

Sure, the character is yours and you can invent other hairdos that aren't like any other existing character, but I don't think that a single spike is all that appealing as a character.

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PS: While hair has importance when creating a character, you shouldn't rely much on it, or over-the-top clothing. A good character is made with good personality, body/face shape and stuff like that. Don't be a cookie-cutter designer, just changing the hairdo and its color, to create new characters.

I did intend for him to look sad or depressed or whatever as the story I want to make I want to be very melancholy in its tone but still lighthearted in the way it is presented. Thank you for the suggestions, as of right now I want this character to have 3 big spikes on his head that I have thought out where it comes from the back right (where the hair grows from and extends over his head) and becomes big spikes.

Like so: (each spike is represented by a different color on the head. Do you see what I am saying or is this a bad way to describe it?)
(P.S. Yes I do know this looks like a horses main or flat top hair)