Spark's Sprites v2.0

[Iocus]

Hey there, I have some pointers to give:

-I think your faces are generally too crammed. Yes, they're anime girls so they have large eyes and all that, but the shape you use for their heads is all circular-like, and ignores all bone structure (cheeks, chin.) Try practicing faces a little more, keep a closer eye to the angles on the outline and all that. It's fine to start with just drawing a circle, but you're supposed to give it some shape afterwards.

-Your colors, especially skin colors, lack contrast. It gets tiresome to explain it every time since it's a recurring issue in pixel art, but basically, you should make the hues be more different from each other, so they don't blend so much. Also, some of the objects have dark outlines and the skin doesn't, so that looks very inconsistent.

-Some of your lines also look a tad gritty and sloppy. You should try taking some time to explore sel-out and anti-alias, and keep in mind that pixel art can only convey so much detail while keeping things readable.

-Be mindful of your lightsource. For the Penguindrum girl, the lightsource seems to be both left and right, judging by how the objects are shaded. Anime have very simplistic shading, but it's still something to keep in mind.


An edit of your Ryuko. Notice how the outline for the face is much darker, making it seem more solid.
I revamped the eyes; just because the left one should be the furthermost, doesn't mean you need to foreshorten it to that degree-- she is almost facing frontward, so it's too excessive.
Also, I did away with a lot of the detail in that eye since it was unnecessary. I also cleaned up the hair, because with all those tufts, it looked way too gritty. I gave the red streak an outline too, to keep it consistent.
Finally, used some anti-aliasing here and there, and tah-dah~

I believe StarSock64 gave a pretty good explanation of this in someone else's thread a while ago, but it feels like you're relying on your references a little too much (at least as far as the anime characters go.) You should try to understand why shapes and objects behave the way they do on whatever lighting or angle, as opposed to just drawing exactly what you think you see. Planning ahead a little might help, too, instead of just drawing outlines from the getgo.


Err, this got a little out of hand, but hope the message got across. Good luck, keep at it!

EDIT: almost forgot, terms like contrast and anti-aliasing can be found in the local Spriting Dictionary, in case you are confused by any of them.