Getting serious on designs

[Terminal Devastation]

Recently I've been learning a lot more about what goes into good game design, so I'm been both inspired to do more towards making a non-fan game of my own lately and made aware just how much extra planning and detail I have to put into
everything about the game.

Long story short, I'm wanting critique not just on how well these sprites are made, but how much and how well the poses/designs protray something about the character. Ideally I'd like every pose and animation to ooze some sort of personality about them.

Which becomes an issue with three main character are sibling living suits of armor that turn into dragons.
I hope I'm not going too much into game design here, but I think it might be revelant to mention some things just to make sure the poses work well for both who the characters are and what I want to use them for.
Gold is supposed to be the dense heroic type. The sort of person that would charge into a fortress filled with enemies to save some one JUST because its the heroic thing to do. He's also the heavy power character.
Bronze is supposed to contrast Gold a bit, being the sort of guy who'd take the safer or more common sense route. And really only is adventuring because his other two siblings are doing so as well as its really one of the only tasks a living suit of armor would be suited for. Bronze is the light fast character.
I've yet to quite nail down a personality for Silver. While Gold tends to represent the stereotypical hero path, and Bronze the practical lets get this down with the least fuss path, Silver is supposed to be the one that chooses, and often has to represent the players choice between two or more options.
Example: First quest/proper level will have the three attempt to save a princess from a crazy wizard, this guy specifically:

Gold will want to run in and conquer the entire castle, while bronze will want to just scale the unguarded outer wall and up the tower, and save the princess that way. The player will get to choose which path to take.
But I don't want Silver to just be a mute player mic piece devoid of any real character, so he needs to look and act like someone who could take either option at any point.

So... Any advice, C+C? I'd like the current designs to be final, but I'm willing change elements if I really need to. I'm more than willing to start over with the same design for better posework though.

[Sketchasaurus]

I'd suggest exaggerating the features and poses more, for the heroic character, enlarging the chest and shoulders a bit and perhaps even animating the character so that the cape seems to always be flowing in the wind. take this image I found via a google search of "superhero stance"

Also, compared to the other two, the color palette for bronze has very little contrast which hinders the readability.

[x0_000]

For Bronze, the current pose is more of a "lazy" pose, he's slouching and doesn't look alert. For your goal, since you want him to be more defense oriented, he should have a shield or some other type of protective gear, and put him in a defensive stance (shield upright, aware of his surroundings, e.g.) You should also consider heavier armor, he's comparatively thin compared to the other two.

The key thing to giving personality is to differentiate how each character does common actions. Fighting games are a great resource for this, and there are plenty of sites (like this one! :p) dedicated to ripping graphics, and in some cases some even have animations prerendered! Fighter's Generation (click me!) is the best resource I know of for this. Here's some examples:


Ash's (the left one) pose is more lax; his right arm is just hanging out there, and in contrast Athena (the middle one) has her arm raised in a defensive manner. Compare that to Cable, the last one. He has an upright standard Superhero pose, and his grunting while zapping his arm suggests ACTION! ACTION! ACTION! Even with that in consideration, his pose doesn't exude "defense": His gun isn't primed in position, and he's leaving himself open. Notice how they position themselves too: Ash is a bit hunched over and his body is facing the viewer, Athena's body is facing away from the opponent, while Cable is upfront.


Some walking examples. Blade, on the left, is hunched over and has his sword in both hands, ready to react to any attack. He also walks in small strides. Shen Woo, in the middle (who's actually walking backwards :p), clearly exudes the most personality. Look at that smug guy. He's got one hand in his pocket, and the other one's egging the opponent to attack. He's not even looking behind himself! You can definitely sum him up in two words: Cocky and confident. Rogue, the last one, has large strides and her pose is similar to Cable's, upright and leaving her open. It's definitely a confident pose, but it's a different type of confidence than Shen Woo.

[Terminal Devastation]

Oh wow. Oh wow. I sort of vaguely knew a lot of the information given, but having it repeated in clearer detail really helps.
And that super hero tip had far greater effect that I could have expected. I had previously thought just the pose would make for a pretty confident heroic looking guy but look what it did to Gold.

It turned him from a slightly confident looking dude, to someone not only heroic but HUGE... everything Gold was supposed to be.
I think I messed up his shading somewhere, and maybe caused a few angles to go awry (And I think I might have lost his sense of balance in there too), but wow... it's so worth it.

Bronze is a bit of a different story. First of, despite a miscommunication on what I wanted him to be, you're right, this is a really slacker-type pose and ill-suited for what I want him to be.
He's suposed to be more of a clever and practical fragile speedster than a lazy person.

it's less refined than gold's alteration, but I just wanted to feel out a few poses and see if any of them give off the right impression (first ones I used a donatello as a pose reference, the second is what I thought the spear users in Castlevania: Harmony of dissonance used, third is what they actually use)
Also tried out a different pallete for bronze. I'm liking the contrast better on it... but I still don't like it. It's creeping into wood/clay pallete territory, and I'm not sure how to fix that. I've tried a lot just to get to the first pallete, using references for real life bronze statues, adding green as a shade (that ended up cluttering everything)... trying more red. But I really need to make sure bronze is bronze and not wood clay or copper. Especailly copper.
The three knights have a rival knight each. Iron for Silver, Brass for Gold
and this guy:

is the shady merchant knight Copper, Bronze's rival.
So I need my palletes pretty exacting, so they look like different materials.
(I actually have other things sprited for this, Like Iron and Brass, but I'm wanting to focus more on a few things first rather than the whole lot of them.)

[Terminal Devastation]

After scouring the SNES, GBA, and arcade sections of TSR, and just roughing out
several poses, I found two I liked (There's surprisingly few spear users with interesting poses, so I had to resort to staff users).
I'm not quite sure out the balance works on the first pose, and I'm not sure how to declutter and clear up the second.

So... how do I make these better?

[Terminal Devastation]

A bunch of characters. Top row main protags, second row respective rivals.
Haven't quite come up with a main protag to correspond with the falconer, but he's too neat to not use as one of the rival team.

[psychospacecow]

You could have a warlock with an affinity for bats, or a wind mage, someone good with bombs (who says the other person has to have an animal?), someone with snakes, or bugs, maybe an eagle.

[Terminal Devastation]

Decided I wanted to just try out TFR style, but didn't want to actually enter anything in it yet.


Also decided I should just revive this thread instead of making another JUST for this.

[TheShyGuy]

It looks cool, buut I don't really understand what the two white "arms" are really supposed to be? They stand out too much in a bad way.

Also, it looks like there's a bit of banding on the closer scarf that's flowing in the air. It might help just to make it a flat color.

[Terminal Devastation]

Okay.
Scarf's not quite what I interpreted "flat color" to mean, but I cleaned up the shading a bit.
I'm never quite sure how to shade flat objects right, but hopefully this is a bit better.

[Terminal Devastation]

I'm probably going to regret doing this...

But I need some advice/C+C on a few of these frames. The posture on a few of them, and especially the arm position on the start of the male's walking (Second row, 5 and sixth from the left, underneath the double slash)

Why would I regret this?
1) There's at least one design choice I know several of you will likely disagree with (For example, I'm using pure black, I tried it without it, and it just doesn't achieve the look I want)
2) I'm using it competitively so a complete overhaul there just isn't time for, and there's a possibility there's enough wrong with the sheet that redoing a lot of these would be called for.

Even so, I'd like to get advice on how to better it, so I can at least attempt to have better quality in any future frames I'd have to make.

[TheShyGuy]

I'll look at em more in depth later, but with small sprites, readability is the most important thing. So that means silhouette and poses/line-of-action is what you probably want to focus most on.