Okay... so I'm working on a spriteset outline in 24x24 px, probably 3 to 5 colors max, with a touch of lefty-righty abstraction for sake of illusionary laziness. I've already got a grid lined out; but I'm struggling with finding good head/body proportions, and it doesn't help a lot that I tend to draw characters/sprites from the head down; since it's mostly important to keep the ground-level contact aligned. Characters will probably be one of 3 distinct heights, maybe 4.

The idea in this outline is so that I can create a script in GM that imports and renders consistently-spaced/themed spritesets for use in sidescroller and 4-way scrolling 2D games, although most of the animations are focused in sidescroller perspective. These will determine defensive hitboxes, and the character animations will produce blurs seperately to define offensive ones.

My present character designs derive from a trifecta of sources, each is based on a gaming protagonist, a MegaMan Robot Master (where weapons and AI are concerned), and a SF/KoF-related fighting style. So there's 4-direction running and basic attacking, there's platformer-specific actions like monkeybar swinging that can be flipped for handstands and stuff like rolling, and wall crawling/climbing (which also doubles as swimming, loosely), a one-hand slash/two hand "axe handle/aiming" set for run'n'gun action or swinging things; then punch and kick sets that relate to their fighting style for "fighter mode," topping off with about 4 very simplified "special move" animations. The animation itself should be pretty minimal, that's what the blur/smear set is designed to do; and many things like rolling will likely utilize rotations/flips.

I guess basically, what I hope to produce with this is one of the simplest, yet most versatile spritesheet layouts ever that can be used in any type of 2D game. If I can get the SoB started, that is! I've also included the original stick-figure-sketch concept, before it got fleshed out more; the original plan was to drop the full set in only 64 frames.