Originally posted by theguy
Originally posted by LennArt
The joker has a pretty awesome gradient in the hair.
Gradients aren't good in pixel art, even if placed pixel by pixel. They don't really make things look 3D since nothing has a curve that smooth normally and they also use too many colours. In pixel art it's usually good practice to limit your colour count.
@Blarg: It's really hard to critique this since there are so many of them. So I'll just the list errors you've made, explain what they mean, what they are and why they're bad. Then I'll make an edit of a random one. I'll edit this post later with it.
You don't really shade any of the characters, and the ones you do just make a bevel effect rather than actual 3D form, since you only shade the edges.
The shading also isn't really noticeable since it's small and there is basically no contrast.
Not only that but it's also pillow shading, which is when the light comes from infront. which just doesn't look right because it's very VERY rare that there is a light-source in front of you.
You've mixed 2x2 pixels with 1x1 with just looks odd.
On that muscular one the anatomy is incorrect (I'll edit that one).
You've used too many colours with too little contrast, it just makes everything blurry.
You've made their legs touching and completely straight, that's very hard to do and doesn't look natural.
For the moment rather than creating detail you should concentrate on learning how to choose colours and create 3D form, as atm you have straight colour ramps (which is when each colour has it's own shades and highlights rather than mixing them together) with no hue shifting (Mixing red in with yellow to make it darker) which makes the colours look boring. As I said I'll edit my post with an edit of one of your characters.