I personally love the "fat" styled characters more. Maybe it's because my first and favorite MMORPG had the fatter characters and not the Tibia-styled ones. I don't know, either way nice work. I just have two comments. Ofcourse, the baldness is a little distracting, and I too would love to see it with hair. Then also, I took a screen shot and pasted it in paint to see what the character looked like standing still and I think the front of the jacket should be a little longer, it's looking a little Steve Urkel-ey to me.

Anyway, nice job.

well, if you want it - http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7246/characterspin6iw.gif

Cool.. going to ask for the second time today if you can make a template/base?

I was going to mention the baldness, but fine.

Perfect rotation, but i dont like this "fat" character style =P

praise always sounds best from people with more talent than me :P

very good *_* Id like to see him with hair lol (and in the game of course)

YAH I really like this piece, but the high light on the top of the head is throwing me off a little. Good work. Tactics RULE!!!

in answer to your numerous questions, the thought process and creative work is all here:
http://pixel-arts.org/pixelopolis/index.php?topic=1143.0
All of the work is done at this scale, starting from 'rough liners,' and then gaining clean liens and color regions and finally shading.
Much of the simple aspects of this project only use the 4 directions, such as attacks (if you can only reach adjacent squares, you dont need animations for the directions you cant reach) and walking (because moving diagonally on a grid makes pathfinding more tricky), but for things like long-ranged attacks, magic, and even just speaking look a lot nicer if the character has access to the full 8 directions

that is really goot. did you do any preliminary work such as  big paper scetches that you scaned in, or did you do it all on the computer in that scale? i am facinated to know the steps of creating this.
I like how the helmets/hats are going to be a separate sprite. allows individuality and custimisability. i am assumeing that weapons will also be a separate sprite?
Also, is it really necissary for there to be that many angles? most tactics sprites that i have seen have only 4 angles...

Since Orelisse is not part of the current project and this character just a test (and also therefor not part of the current project as anything but that), i wont officially be doing anything with Orelisse yet, but i will be doing the backgrounds for this project and theres a possibility that this character and his world will be somehow worked into it or another similar-styled project

Great job!

Looking forward to see the rest of the anims.

Are you creating backgrounds for Orelisse too?

but he's sooo cute bald :) Great job, of course.