I like the last version a lot more also. Although, if you ask me, his left arm should be as dark as or darker then his left leg. The reasoning is that it's the furthest limb in the background. Well, that's just how I'd do it anyways. Keep it up!
Good point. It's hard to really know about the color. Because the last gif wasn't done with web safe colors. But on my computer the pants look dark red and the shirt is brown. But on my brothers computer the whole pic is washed out.
but I should probably try some better colors. Right now I'm painting up a backdrop for him. Games really are more the environment than the sprite.
here is a update to my walk cycle. It includes him activating his powers. His powers are like the green lanterns. He can change them into many things. The only probable is I haven't thought any more weapon transfromations for him.
I think the animation is very good, however, I feel the sprite itself to be quite jagged in the outline. Are you using a solid black outline, a very dark hue of a color, or some anti-aliasing?
I draw and paint with my tablet at 400 px in photoshop elements 4. I resize to about half. than I definge. after that I select the whole layer and use stroke mask to outline it. The stroke mask isn't set to anti-aliasing but could be.
If I was to anti-alias how do I keep white spots out of my edges. Which is why I definge the anti-aliasing in the frist place.
You do it by hand pixel by pixel, frame by frame, softening the outline.
The first step is to clean up the outlines, a clear concept of that shows in the following tutorial (part two); http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=221
After that you can use a dark grey hue to replace certain pixels in the outline where it fits, like ninety degree corners and stuff. It really cleans up the picture!
EDIT:
I used a frame from the animation and "cleaned" it up in two steps.
The top one is the original.
In the second one I have cleaned up a few rough edges and scrap pixels, plus tried to smooth out the outline with one single shade of dark red/brownish.
In the bottom one I made a few minor adjustments and tried to smooth things out a bit more.
Well, personally I don't use pitch black outlines that much except for VERY dark bits. So my only real suggestion would be to try and have the outline in a dark shade of a color that fits the character.
I made the black parts of the outline from my clean-up dark red, and the lighter shade of the outline in a brown/red tone.
Personally I think it smoothens the character out, have a look!