i would like to make some hopefully helpful critical comments thoi'm new to game editor and its community, i've only really dipped my toe in and have no idea what i'm doing but still... and as you can see from my avatar, i can hardly get critical about sprite animation and design!
i love the cartoon style you're developing, looks like it could be from a cool kids tv cartoon show like asterix or something, nice. so looks like your game is going to be set in a fantasy/medieval world. it might be worth doing some research into medieval tribes/peoples like celts, picts, vikings, normans, saxons, vandals, goths, gauls, as well as classical roman/greek/spartan troop types and peoples. the main reason why i mention this is that yavin seems like a bit of a pick 'n' mix with a classical/greek/roman style helmet but then with celtic attire, kilt etc. not that there's anything wrong with this, it just seemed like a bit of a mishmash to me...
i also think his hand is far too small, especially for a cartoon character. i think it helps to make features such as hands, feet, eyes etc oversized for cartoon characters. i'd work a bit more on tweaking the whole arm and hand... i'd also make his sword bigger/rounder/more cartoony/bowie knife like, thicker in the middle.
also i think you need to make one is his legs noticeably longer than the other, because at the moment it's hard to tell which leg is nearest to the viewer, eg it's hard to tell whether the back is his right or left leg and vice versa for the front, does that make sense? i think this would also help to give the character depth and not look quite so flat...
also on another note i'm not really sure what chai is talking about re graphics gale costs/animation prices... have i missed some integral aspect of graphics gale?! i've been using the freeware version to help with my animations. admittedly my animation sequences are very simple for my 8 bit style sprites i've been working on and i haven't been using any of the bells and whistles in graphics gale, but i think there's quite a bit you can do with it. and there must be some good tutorials out there for it... i don't know anything about anything but i would've thought that getting into flash would take a lot of time and effort. i'm sure it'd be an amazing tool to help in game making process but i guess you have to ask yourself whether you need to increase the learning curve even more! i bow down to the wisdom of chai tho!
cool stuff tho keep it up
so can we all expect an asterix styled ghosts'n'goblins type platformer from you soon?! 
I was really messin around with graphicsGale, and yavin sorta took shape. He's actually based on one of my manga characters.
I'm actually wanting a flat sort of look. But I'll try making the front leg longer
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