Spark's Sprites v2.0

[SparkMouse]

Black★Rock Shooter. Made and animated in Photoshop CS6 for the first time; flame was a slightly opaque layer, animation was handled with blur and smudge tools.


Isabelle, from Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

@Gors I see what you mean with the leg angling, I might go back and change them up a bit. Aside from the first one, each sprite was an edit off another so I could keep the style, proportions, etc consistent and reduce my overall workload. It's not like that isn't a common practice.
They are all based on their official reference art, which is why they all basically have the same pose.
Ref 1 Ref 2 Ref 3 Ref 4 Ref 5
It bothers me a little that people criticize my poses and stuff when most of the time I'm just trying to emulate the references. The pose is literally the least helpful thing to critique; saying something like "the pose is boring/stiff" is basically meaningless unless it's intended to be an interesting pose.
The faces probably seem crammed because of the hair. I pretty much only sprite girls who happen to have interesting hairstyles, so not really sure what else to say about that. Is there a way I can make them less crammed?