Hi Sai; thanks for your comments; The original piece was way more flat/2D ish and had a more derivative palette but after many many edit's i decided to make it a bit more personal with Maple inspiration only the other thing is all maplestory sprites have black outlines; which this no longer does (it did before) I have taken your comments on board about the tail highlight and the legs and may come back to the piece at some point because as Clein said I want to take a break from this for now because 9/10 hours constantly looking at a piece kind of made me hate it in a way; I will return to it at some point in the future and may even revamp it entirely.

Is it Maplestory intended? If so, the sprite should be in a 2D perspective. I would know since I make Maplestory sprites myself. The palette is not exactly the kind of style that would be used in Maplestory, but it's an appealing palette nonetheless. The feet appear to be facing inwards rather than a more natural outwards stance. The shading of the tail really bothers me because the light source should be coming from the top left (like every Maplestory sprite) but it appears as if light is hitting the tail from a lower angle on the tail. You might want to study the shading style in Maplestory a bit more, but only if it is actually Maplestory intended. if it was just an inspired piece, then I think the sprite itself looks quite well done.

Worth the time put in, its really come a long way in the right direction. Playing about with some texturing might be a good idea on either this piece or new ones, you can always return to it later if it becomes boring to work on for a bit too. Giving a sense of texture, like a few scales or a mild pattern to some of the skin would help it from looking like plastic, at the moment some areas look really glossy and some really dull, which makes it look less alive I think. Good cleanup of the feet. I'm not totally thrilled with the new palette though it is an interesting shift, the difference in contrast between darkest and 2nd-darkest pinks is too strong. I would suggest moving the pink tones to more red ones. Theres a few hard edges that are too straight in the shading, on the jaw and bottom of the neck, and knee in particular.

You've done great, and progressed a lot, maybe working on some smaller pieces experimenting with styles and techniques before coming back to work on this would be a good idea. You have a solid base here if you decide to return to it later. I like your determination :)

I have made some drastic edits, thanksfor your input Clein; it has really helped; I wanted to go for some warmer colours to suit the original environment i had planned for this creature which was a volcanic/rocky wasteland. As opposed to the more green palette of before; I have learnt a lot about colour mixing and line (i.e; making curves consistent) from this piece and am a little embarassed to say this tiny little pixel has taken over 9 hours work and I STILL don't think it is ready. I will keep making edits and perhaps add in some more details (like scales etc.) let me know what you think guys and I can make it even better. I may even animate it at some point.

solid edit by Cilein: i think getting the detail of the form in the mid-tone area is the key.

Nothing to be embarassed over, its a cool character. Your update takes some good steps in the right direction.

The update didn't have its colors tracked well, you used over 25 with some almost identical. I revamped it making hte following changes;

-Palette; reduced colors, changed some colors

-Anatomy; redrew bits around the head feet and tail particularly and tidied corners and some curves

-Shading; you attempted to 'pillow shade'  to do AA, AA doesn't require every pixel inside/outside your lineart beside the line to get an AA color, only where the curves are more severe. The shading in general was a bit 'banded' so I changed the lighting of the whole thing.

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/1351/doragorevampcilein.png

Thanks for your comments; I am really embarassed that I missed those mistakes. I think you are right and I will work on fixing this and polishing it by fixing the shading and attempting some AA, hopefully I wont fail too bad.

I like the character, the head shape is interesting and distinctive.

The lined 'underbelly' looks off though, I think it might work better to see less of it on the tail.

This would benefit from some anti-analysing too, and a touch-up on the shading of the closer leg, the smaller back-bump and the lit section of the tail. There are a few pixels missing from the outline at the ass area, and a few extra ones that aren't needed around the claws and tip of tail.

It would be well worth the extra effort to throw in those touches to polish your good work so far.