Faeldspr's Top-Down Sprites

[Previous]

The tail looks a lot like it was attached to the top of the head, you should try to seperate them better visually, for example by making the tail darker (to add more depth). I would remove the teeth as they look odd and are just too much detail for the size you're working in. Just my thought though.
The pixel patterns on the fence and wall look a bit too random on some places and especially the fence looks somewhat noisy in some spots. You should at least remove the lonely pixels (single pixels among differently colours pixels).

[Jamuk]

Ok, well I've added a darker shade behind the head on the tail. I also tested out your suggestion of removing the teeth.
Original vs. edit vs. no teeth

I think he looks more harmless without teeth.

I also tried to clean up some of the shading, especially those lonely pixels:

[Butler]

I think you should darken the tail a little bit more, still looks like its attached to his head to me. Maybe make the base of the tail, near his head, darker and gradient to the colour you have now, if the tail is curved, or make the whole tail gradient a little darker if its curving away. (I might be wrong, i'm still not a great spriter :p)

Removing the teeth makes the sprite look nicer, instead of having flashes of white in the mouth area every few frames.

On fence, try and remember which direction the wood grain is, and that wood isnt just streaks, but will also have the patterns caused by a branch or other offshoot. If you add 1 or 2 of those in there instead of your 'Lonely pixels' then you should have a realistic wood textures, and it wont look so curved and slightly empty on the surface. But don't put back the lonelies.

My 2 penny's

[Jamuk]

I can see what you mean actually about flashes of white with the teeth, I'll leave them out in future.
About the tail, I was going for something like this:

Spoiler

Hence why it gets lighter nearer the end. I tried making it darker:
--->
Here is a new version where I have added knots to the wood grain like you suggested:
--->

[Jamuk]

Here's a bat animation to populate caves:

[Previous]

I think the body and head are moving up and down way too much, the amplitude should be much smaller. Instead, the tips of the wings at the top should move more, currently they look like they stay in place and flicker in one frame, while only the bottom end of the wings actually moves a bit. Not too bad for a start, though!

[Jamuk]

Ok, so I've reduced the head/body movement, and tried editing the wing tips in the second frame.

--->

How does this look?

[Previous]

That's better.
The shading on the wings-down frame looks odd, the light part should be bigger and more upwards as it looks somewhat pillow-shaded.

[Jamuk]

--->

[Previous]

That's better.

There's another thing where I wasn't sure what exactly it is that looked odd. Thus I just re-checked my sources on swallows and remembered:
When the wings are stoked down, they're fully extended. When they are pulled back up, they are folded and closer to the body. Thus, I suggest using two different frames instead of the same. I think that would look neater.

I know bats aren't swallows but flapping wings are flapping wings!

[Jamuk]

I found a fairly good video of a bat in flight: http://youtu.be/Ni_mS4cKPXY
Do you mean that I should add in a frame where the wings are near vertical as they are pulled up?

[Previous]

I don't think a side-view is a good reference when you're spriting it from the front. This video is a bit better, but no full front view either:
[video=youtube]www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAP2I-t3FGs[/video]

Basically, the second frame should have the wings stretched out more while the fourth frame should have them closer to the body.

The tips of the wings perform a somewhat circular motion.

More details

This illustration I took from an article about barn swallow flight kinematics shows how the tips of the wings move (it varies a little with the speed).
(Each dot marks a time unit - the wings are stroked down faster then they are pulled up)
Bat wings aren't too different from that, as you can see in the video.

[Jamuk]

It's now a 4-frame GIF, instead of a 3-frame one.
--->
Here's the sheet as well:


EDIT:
Attempted a north-facing sprite:

And also a skellington version:

[Jamuk]

I decided to do a door, but can't seem to get the shading right:

[Jamuk]

So I was trying to do a basic human/person and I'd appreciate any critique anyone has on this. Please ignore the hair, it's only really a placeholder.