You can avoid making your explosions into squares if you animate them in a space that is much bigger.  As well as not animating all the way to the end of that space.  What this shows is all the particles from the smoke just end at around the same time and place.  And the reason for this I suspect is instead of animating each particle 1 by 1 you animated them all at the same time for each frame.

It's much easier to animate particles when you focus on 1 at a time.  What I mean is you work on one particle all the way to the end of the animation then go back to frame 1 and repeat till you are satisfied.  It allows you to vary the speed, the trajectory, and overall destination.  This will also help with each piece fading out on it's own time as opposed to fading out at the same time as all the others.

However it is very smoothly animated.  And the colors work really well too.

Yeah I agree with you I should've done some research on actual leather jackets but I was just using what I remember on how to depict leather.  Honsetly I took a barebones approach for the jacket.  I knew how the folds of the arms would go but everything else I was like...ehhh thats good lol.  As for the shoes I also agree.  While I was working on the shoes they were actually heavily outlined in black and when I started polishing I was like...I don't have any outlines on this figure at all whoops so then I compromised with outlines and using the darkest shade as an oultine.  As for his pants hmmm yes they are leather now that I think of it.  This guy...is one leather lovin' mofo.

Thanks so much for looking at my piece and I'm ecstatic you say the anatomy is natural :D  Also I'm glad you like the hair.  I redesigned it several times while working on it and I'm amazed I pulled something together that was nice at the end lol.

For my next piece I will take into account the principal of what you critiqued me on which I believe is
 

*Reference your materials

*Make sure piece is unified

Cheers

Thank you! :D

The only thing I think looks off is the odd lighting on his hair.  Doesn't seem to be very consistent.  Otherwise it looks very nice.  Are you going to have a return to idle animation?  ( I always neglect adding one for my anims.)

It's probably because she shoots while running otherwise if the arm bounced the bullets would be at different heights.  And that would be a bit confusing for players if it did.

The anatomy used to be more accurate but at that size it look wrong at 1x so I fattened everything out and shrunk it.  I normally draw from sketches but this one was done on the computer exclusively, I can see that was a bad choice.

I wanted to but it would've taken me too much time :(  I was gonna add a 2 pixel outline.

I tried to edit it to get her ass to jiggle but I was so confused as to where her ass would be based on that small movement :(  So I failed.  I also tried to add a jiggle at the end of the movement but also to no avail.

Thanks for the kind words :D  I feel much better now. 

This version is up for revision but  this version was a mistake, my real entry for the gallery is here  http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/50132.htm

For the future can you contact the sites creator and tell him it's an hour too fast for Pacific time?

The rules did not state there couldn't be more than one character.  I have my character, there just happens to be an excess of 1 more character with a background.  The rules stated that transparency was required, I guess it was dumb to assume that we were supposed to be creative with it's use, had the rules been clearly stated I could've been done with this hours ago and gone on with my life. 

Honestly I thought these were supposed to be challenging...I'm disappointed.  I'm not mad or anything just...seriously learned about this contest today and worked on it from 10 am to now and all I get from it is scolding.

Great.

Hoping I followed the rules...

This week we want you to make an animated sprite of an original character using just black, white and transparency.

Update: Please make sure your entry is a full sprite of your character. This is not a portrait challenge.

Canvas Size - Max 80 x 80.
Colours - Exactly 3. You must only use pure black (#000000), pure white (#ffffff) and transparency.
Transparency - Required.
Animation - Required. Min 4 frames.

If it used the specifics of only one character against a blank background I could've just inserted my girl character there and been done with it hours ago.  So if thats the case I think next time the rules should be explained better so there are no confusions :D

N/A

Oh craaaaaaaaaap...the transparency messed up.......AAAAAAHHHH

I agree...I think the legs are too thin grrr.  I have trouble with keeping things a big size.

Di0xygen, you are right I didn't even think to return it to an idle...whoops.