The only issue I have with this is the lack of squash of the top of the sprite. I'm looking forward to more of your work!

 Wow. The colors are beautiful, and the shading is excellent. Really not sure about the authenticity of the animation, though, they don't really move like that. Still, great.

Awesome :D  but you should type on the preview "animation inside" or something :P

Duude the way the jellyfish is colored is soo serious and awesome it looks like the kind of art you see in magic cards or rpg games... I don't know about the movement though, the movement is too cartoony for the look, I think the animation could be better with pauses between the pumps the jellyfish makes like.. huge smooth pump---then slow retraction from the pump---then huge smooth pump again... the motion is just too fast I think...

I'm just a newbie and this is just what I think, hope this helps.. :)

Ok thanks i was misled by your awesomeness !

Manjaman: it is handmade.  I drew it by choosing several colours for my blue gradient.  I then drew these in thick lines across the image.  Going back over it I then broke up the gradient by adding single pixel lines near to the border of two colours.  That gave me a decent gradient, but still looked fairly mathematical.  So I then added a bunch of two pixel square dots around the gradient, suggestive of the idea of flotsam and also to break up the gradient even more.

Bg clearly doesn't look handmade, but i assume it is since your pixel art's been approved.

Great animation !

It looks kinda like hes moving up very slowly :o

This is lovley.

Still have my doubts...submitting, though...

Manupix: I'm not sure why this is still in wait of approval... and I see what you're saying about the solid feel of the tentacles, but I actually kinda like that.  A real brutish and thick jellyfish.  I'll do another which is more dainty.  :)

make that water darker and it could look better or make the shadow of that jelly darker.

I like the light on the top, it works well with the bg to feel like dim sunlight. It clashes with the tentacles though, which look solid and opaque, woodlike almost.  I'd reuse the top colors for them.

Why is this still in wait of approval, I wonder?

Hatch: sweet.  I've misunderstood, then.  Water background added!  :)

Backgrounds are not discouraged, only pointless backgrounds. People tend to draw something in Paint and lazily leave the ugly white BG on it--this is an example of what we're trying to avoid. If you have a reason for a BG, even a flimsy reason, it's usually totally fine.

 Thanks for the comments!  I was actually thinking of this piece as a finished piece, not a WIP.  :) Some of the reference of jellyfish I found on the internet makes the tentacles look like bundles, and though this gives the jellyfish a mushroom-ish look, I like the chunkiness and the allusion to Goomba.

I think the bundle of tentacles look better over a water blue background (though I didn't include a background here as I think backgrounds are discouraged?).  I've thrown it over a non-pixel-art water-blue background here.

After all the comments, I've think I'll do another, different species, jellyfish.  Something with a small bell and long, long individual tentacles.

looks lke jumping mushroom in my eyes. animation is good but tentacles looks like mushroom's leg. :L

Yes, you should, and the thing is, is that pixel art never finishes so early. Pixel art takes a long time to make. It's not like where you use like photoshop cs5 and make a good art fast. Pixel art takes time, remember that. And when you need help, just go to the Forums and click WIP (Work in Progress) and show your art there and get C&C to improve your work.

 And that kids, is why you don't glue your fingers together with guerilla glue. I think you should try the individual tentacles again.

Pretty good animation. Heres an idea, you could try individual tentacles but the tentacles clump up together and pushes the jellyfish up.