SNES-Style Mixel Sprites-CANCELLED

[TheYoshiState]

Not gonna lie, Balk looks pretty legit. Not sure what you did - but there's a big problem that I'm gonna get to much, much later. I'm gonna throw down the critique, so Get Yo Booty Ready

OK, seriously, fix the first ones before you add more. I've already seen the official art, so I know they're not supposed to be that jagged or have those weird octagonal eyes. It looks like you used a rounded rectangle to draw them and called it a day.

Which ones, specifically, should I fix?

All of them?  I'd go back and do the blue dragon and the firey red guy (they were your first two)

I noticed something while going between this topic, but first - this isn't really "SNES-style" at all. There's no really designated "SNES style", other than maybe limiting your palette to a specific game's palette (like, for example, the Super Mario Kart character palette. Note how many colors are used for a main character sprite (if I recall, there's a limit of eight colors used on the sprite, which includes the black outline and a transparent background (now limiting you to 6 colors to use within each sprite)

Also, if you're trying to establish a style - I'm pretty sure the two characters below (blue dragon, firey red guy) are completely different sizes...and I assume the red guy, when standing upright, would only reach the top of the blue dragon's torso at most.
You may want to consider using the different characters as "yardsticks" for one another for determining a size you want them to be.

However, if this is your first pixelart exercise, you can skip what I stated above. What I'm mentioning next is really crucial and I've really gotta share it right now.

That said,

The Really Big Problem
I Mentioned Earlier That Is
Crippling Your Pixelart
Is Right Here

I Googled Scorpi, and I found this character render.

Compare it to yours. Do you see something missing? Like, really really missing?
It's your sprite's outlines. They've got one-pixel thickness throughout. Every single one. As a result they look really flat and like you just went nuts with the shape tools in Microsoft Paint. While it's neat that you finally drew the character in question, you might want to see if you can ape the style from Mixels. After all, they seem to be borrowing an aesthetic choice from a particular game with a cutesy, flat style.

Looking at Paper Mario here, do you notice the varied thickness of the outline, and how it lends to the overall look of the character? There's a noticeably thicker outline around the whole character (including his hands while he's holding his chin), whereas the details on the character are done in a noticeably lighter outline.

Looking at the aesthetic of Mixels, that appears to be done to extremes, with a fat outline going around the outside of the character with a thin outline on the inside of the character. Pointed areas of the character have thinner outlines to emphasize their pointiness.

Now, if you heed my advice and apply it to your sprites, you might notice that the outlines may still look rigid.
That's OK - that can be fixed by using an advanced technique called "selout", or selective outlining - which you don't have to worry about right now. Try altering the character outlines and see how that works out first.

A little article about selective outlining is here.
http://www.yarrninja.com/pixeltutorial/chapter12.htm

[I have a feeling the technique I'm thinking of isn't actually selout; as you'd usually use selout on the OUTSIDE of the sprite to give it a cleaner look. If someone else knows the term, then please correct me]

Buuuuut don't heed the selout tip yet. A tip with it though: Try using the darker color shade (ie. use the dark red color of the red character, in other words) you're using on the INSIDE of your new thicker outline around the sharper edges to give them a rounder, smoother look.
But don't go nuts with that technique - otherwise the sprite's going to end up being pillow-shaded, and, well

look like a pillow.


tl;dr version: vary your character's outlines, play with selout

I'll attempt this soon.