I've tried out these sprites now. The Basher, Digger, Drowner and Shimmier all look great now!
Awesome
The Fencer is the only one that still doesn't feel right to me. I think that to really get this right, it needs to more closely mimic the pose of the low-res one (lance held by his side, not stretched out in front, in the opposite hand from what the high-res sprite does), but that would be a lot of work. Otherwise, for the lance to be in the correct spot, the feet would have to be way off (indeed, it's possible to make the lance work by instead having the feet really wrong, just by shifting the FOOT_X position in scheme.nxmi). Maybe see if anyone else has any thoughts?
Could the Fencer simply be positioned slightly backwards from its current spot? (or is this what you mean by shifting the FOOT_X position?) I've attached another version here with the non-lance arm resting on the Fencer's waist, which allows the entire Lemming to be moved back another 2 pixels within the animation. I also shortened the lance by another pixel. This is a more pleasing result in terms of it's correspondence with the mask, however now the feet are totally off-position! I think it's worth persevering with this though, because the hi-res version of the Fencer is just that bit more... Fencery!
( For those of you who want to see the Fencer sprite in action but don't want to set up the high-res experimental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=994bev-ukm8 )
Heads up - this video is appearing as a blank screen...!
In terms of "anything else", I think it's just the digger (and of course the Xmas sprites, if you're still up for doing those). Did you have a specific idea in mind for the digger?both.
I'm on the Xmas sprites - I'll try to get these to you by the end of the weekend. As for the Digger sprite, since this involves creating a completely new animation I want to make sure we have an idea we're happy with before I go ahead with this. So far, my ideas are:
1 Leave it as it is, but keep the Lemming's face pointing towards the direction they're facing throughout the animation rather than swishing left to right (I've attached a version of this for each resolution). I'd personally vote for this as the simplest and most elegant idea (similar to the blocker idea), and since it's the closest to the classic Digger sprite we all know and love.
2 Have the Lemming dig with their front paws rabbit-style, tossing the earth out backwards between their legs. A humorous idea that would be fun to animate, but isn't as downwardly-oriented as the motion of the Digger. Maybe this would work as a new diagonally-downwards skill instead...?
3 Have the Lemming pull out a spade and dig garden-style, putting their foot on the spade and then tossing out the earth behind them (they'd be facing in the direction they're moving). Again, would be fun to animate. My only issue with this idea is that it might not be as
quick as the current Digger sprite, which moves at a fair old lick, and still look convincing.
I'm happy to try these and any other ideas that people might have, but tbh it'd be good to have a bit of a consensus on an idea before I begin work on it.