2D Zelda Higher Resolution Community Project

[Valo]

-post-

I actually still fail to see your point. having a boomerang for a head isnt healthy, it might swing around to kick him in the rear later.

I'm going to give you half a point on the busy details. I could probably tone it down some and still detail it more than yours. But to not even try because it MIGHT not work perfectly is a pretty poor excuse.

And yes, additional color can and does help readability, however it is not always needed to define shape. And having too much empty space with poor shaping, color or no color, is going to look...welll...not good.

And lets break down that last psp fighter example. A lot of the added detail is reshaped line work, added fingers, better shaped limbs and plates. This is all done not with the addition of color but through better base art. Now lets bring back to the original.Without reshaping the head in any way, we are left with readable but dare i say BROKEN details. What details were left ambiguous in the original dueto hitbox and tile limits are replaced with off and muddy looking details. I'll bring you back to the head. There is a lot you can do to reshape that and make the ears look like ears, but instead we opt to leave it look a boomerang power up. there are a lot of details you can add to clean it up without even reshaping the ears. You could add the sideburns and have the ears stand off from the face better simply from having the sideburns act as a border. 

There is a difference from having a few unreadable details and having no details to read. That is the key issue here. As silly as it sounds, with your major criticism of mine being too many pixels in a small space, mine is the inverse, so much space with not enough pixels.