Emoticons and you - critique at will!

[Trihan]

Okay, so I've taken my first little tiny baby steps into the scary world of pixel art once again, and thanks to a couple of wonderful tutorials by luckylinx and Spaarghy on DeviantArt I've churned a few out, and then I had a go at a couple of my own design. Basically I just want some feedback on the colours I used (I pretty much suck at choosing palettes right now and probably have some issues with saturation), which shading "style" looks best and whether the two I did by myself are any good. So without further ado, let the emoticon parade begin! (All are posted at 1x and 4x)

[Trent R]

Just because it's hard for me to look at them all when they're zoomed to 4x. I'll edit my critique soon.

~Trent
[Edit]: I must say that I like the first, lighter of the two shades. But they are very cute and your have a wide variety of expressions. Good work!

~Trent

[Gilbert]

One problem I have with them is that the gradient shading on them make details hard to see. So it's a bit difficult to differenciate between them. They look virtually more or less the same at first sight, thus reducing the quick moody impact emoticons should give.

I'll suggest reducing the number of levels of the gradients, or even removing the shading.

[paolo]

Personally, I like the shading. My suggestion would be to make the features larger and bolder, maybe by doing something as simple as drawing the black parts two pixels thick.

[Trihan]

paolo: I gave your suggestion a shot with the first one:



Any better?