Ugh, didn't really think we'd be using the new Trevenant sprite. I'm not at all happy with it. I'll admit that it has its advantages over the old one, but there's still a LOT of room for improvement.
I'm not going to include the one made by Quanyails and myself in this comparison because Galifia's sprite has overall better proportions almost everywhere. Still, that doesn't mean I don't have a lot of qualms about it.
First of all, the all the dark brown lines on it really aren't necessary. In-game, Trevenant doesn't have them, and it's pretty obvious that the sprite is based on the
Dream World artwork. I'd normally be fine with all those lines, but I think that they add unnecessary detail, are overall distracting, and makes it seem less like GameFreak's style. Luckily, it would be an easy fix.
Second, I'm really not buying the face. The "smile" really doesn't compliment Trevenant's theme at all. It's an undead tree, it should look a lot more neutral, not all obnoxiously smiley. I get that it's subjective, but "Teehee, I know something that you don't!" seems a lot less fitting than something like "Leave this forest before I destroy you". This won't take long to fix either, though.
EDIT: Shoulda been more clear about this, but it's not just the mouth that's smiling. It's the eye too. Just too dang happy for some reason.
And then the animation. The legs are fantastic, far better than my original version. But the arms are just, well, ew. Too active and too fast. It should be a lot more calm and undead looking. The angles at which they rotate doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's hard to isolate exactly what's wrong, but I still have a very good idea of what I'd do differently. It could help to lower the arms on the static version, but the pose is still pretty cool and there isn't a whole lot of need to fix it. I'd be willing to redo the animation if necessary.
Since the sprite is still okay and the changes I've proposed may not necessarily be objectively better, I'm not going to work on it just yet until I get some kind of approval.