Lately been doing icons for the junk I've purchased from asset store. Not precisely pixelart, but I've used a pixel sized brush.

The eye color for the green goblin doesn't match, and the skin color for the goblin wizard doesn't match.

Other than that, I think they look suitable enough.

That is because I heavily edited them for the game, including recoloring and reducing head sizes. Original sprites were intended for anime game, so they are more bright and colorful, while I need some space for visual effects like explosions. Generally if you use very bright colors, then your explosions will look washed out and not bright enough.

Some retouch of the old goblin portrait, which I did first.

Hope it is an improvement. The glasses were added since now it uses bombs as weapon, therefore all the dust and flashes. Also, it looks more crazy with glasses.

Adapted that Pikeman sprite for my game. It looks dirty now, since I used actual noise function to produce texture, but should be fine enough as a placeholder.

BTW, GIMP still has no built-in arrow tool and the plugin repository is down

Trying to draw a portrait for angel sprite:

Long ago I commissioned a Witch character sprite to several Russian freelancers. The idea is that she is half human and half medusa gorgon. Obviously a play on the bipolar disorder stereotype.

Each freelancer made some garbage, ignoring technical specs, anatomy and animations. Initial version was made by some girl. She did okay sideview sprites, but when it came to animating isometry, she got really uneasy (in fact, most indie gamedev artists get scared).

The sprite was not needed back then so I shelved it. But as the game goes to completion I have to fix all the crap, since it is needed ingame. I'm not hiring a freelancer, since they are always clueless and I will waste more time explaining them what needs to be done.

Anyway here is that Witch sprite before and after retouch. Artist missed proportions and made more realistic character (as they taught at the art school), while the game needs a squashed fat version, since comics style and the stuff (the sprite was taller than the elf sprite). I've removed that huge headgear, because it made character really noisy and fragile looking.

Made a choppy animation of that witch:

It doesn't look nice (i.e. fan goes out of order with hand, which needs some subpixel painting), but believe me it was lot worse. Here is what freelancer originally made:

The helmet is the least broken part there. It needs animations fixed. Since the sprite was produced out of 3d model, its outline is a bit wobbly.

Finally some quick portrait, based of the classic Abbott Handerson Thayer's painting. Yeah, Abbott wont be happy knowing people turn his daughter into Medusa, then again, she has such uneasy face, typical of people with BPD.

How Ratman portrait changed over time:

And that goblin from the OP was assigned to a cannon with a choppy animation.