Final Fantasy Hacktics

Your main problem with both of these Mimi is that you are editing them in double or triple size. You wont be able to just shrink them down and put them in game. When you work on sprites you always do it at 100%. We just always blow them up a little for previews. That is why you get "flies" on their necks and just garbled pixels. These are looking decent but you are going to need to change your approach to editing.

I did the alchemist and the soldier in the standard 32 x 48 format. I did the wizard in the 64 x 96 format. Maybe if I would have started in the original size like you suggested Cheetah, my wizard would have looked better. The "fly" on the soldiers neck came from when I edited the wizard and the soldier was in the background. I accidentally clicked on it and that little speck showed up on the neck. I just forgot to erase it.

@Jon, I re-shaded the soldiers hair above the ear. Does this look okay?
I know I am not at all good at shading hair. I also redid the alchemist a little to make her hair look longer.

They are both coming along nicely, but why is there a giant blob of random pixels at the bottom of the chemist portrait.

Ah, thats like a rule, never ever work on potraits besides there correct size, same goes for sprites, just zoom in if they are too small. I think the soldier looks better, but no, I don't know if you see what I mean with the chemist, maybe I will just fix the one part that seems strange, here pigtail hair strand (the one closer to us) just gets cut off by brown (clothing?).

Edit:
[attachment=1:9dz85zwb]alchemist.png[/attachment:9dz85zwb] [attachment=0:9dz85zwb]alchemist2.png[/attachment:9dz85zwb]

Thanks for helping me with the alchemist Jon. It looks so much better now.
What did you think about the soldier? Did I fix the problem with the hair?

BTW I gave the wizard a different hat? What do you think? Does it look okay?
[attachment=1:1sln1qjz]magus4p.bmp[/attachment:1sln1qjz]

Edit - I took Cheetah's advice and started over with the regular 32x48 size.
         I changed his hat to the female wizard's hat. What does everyone think?
[attachment=0:1sln1qjz]magus5p.bmp[/attachment:1sln1qjz]

the hat seems a little bit out of place.... like its too high up in the portrait or something, id say shift the head to the left, and down slightly, to look more fft-ish

I'm out of town now, but when I get back I'll try lowering the hat.

Female wizard's hat fits much better. Great work, Mimi. Just lower it, as mentioned before.

Thanks for all the input everyone.
Here is the wizard with the hat lowered a bit.
[attachment=0:2j6i8dyx]magus6.bmp[/attachment:2j6i8dyx]

Tell me what you think, okay?

I think even a little more down 1-2 px would look good.

Okay I lowered his hat a little more.
[attachment=0:3u3eq9b4]magus7.bmp[/attachment:3u3eq9b4]

I also made a new portrait, the witch:
[attachment=1:3u3eq9b4]witchp.bmp[/attachment:3u3eq9b4]

Tell me what you think.

Not any good with portraits, but the witch's expression looks a little crooked...

You need to put more shades under the hat, there should be a shadow in that place.

It's just the mouth, but yeah, like kage said you need that hat to cast a shadow on her face for it to look legit.

Thanks for all of the crits, everyone. They help alot.
Here is the new witch with the shading that I forgot and a straight mouth.
[attachment=0:1i89ktit]witch2p.bmp[/attachment:1i89ktit]

Tell me what you think.

Wait, you changed mouth AND the chin line. And you changed it in the wrong way. You was supposed to fix mouth only, nothing else.

i like the witch (the portrait before the more recent one), you need some shading where the hat connects to the face tho.

Agreed with Kage, just put the new mouth on the old face shape and add the hat shading.

Okay. I tried to fix the face.
I don't know how it got like that.
Here is the newest attempt:
[attachment=0:1lc3gr07]witch3p.bmp[/attachment:1lc3gr07]

You are shading under the hat, but it needs to be the darkest available skin tone. Mouth may need to be up a pixel.