Gaia's Sprite Thread

[Gors]

it's worthy to note that abusing A+A is not 'going away from 8-bit'. You'll just make the sprite blurred and cluttered. Anti+aliasing is a technique that helps making lines smoother, but in excessive ammounts, it makes things too soft and without impact.

1- Contrast is your friend. Prefer using it instead of creating a shitload of colors. It makes your work sharper, more impactant and you'll have less colors to manage and work with;
2- Skin is not plastic. Skin is a very opaque surface so adding white specs will make humans very artificial. Unless all your humans are dipped in oil, don't do that;
3- Balance is important. All your characters feel like they'd fall on their back (this is because you used the same template, I suppose). Take care when using templates. While they can make the spriting process easier, you might carry its mistakes along, like it happened here. Also, even if you're using a correct template, be sure to edit it more: play with the limbs' thickness, bulkiness, height, etc. so this way you can have interesting body shapes.
4- Proportion is also important. I suggest changing some of your style (thin limbs with huge hands, Popeye limbs, arms that can touch the knee even if standing normally etc., airhumping) into something more logical. My two cents, though.
5- Pixelart is generally small, like in this case. So do your best at making things readable, even if it means removing some of the details.
6- Avoid selouting INSIDE the sprite. Hell, avoid selout altogether. It is a difficult technique and it can turn things ugly if done incorrectly.

NOTE: using less colors doesn't mean less details. Not using A+A doesn't mean going back to 8-bit roots. Adding white specs into every pixel cluster possible isn't adding details. Pixelart is a balance between details, readability and color usage.