ok that helps and would you believe i was going off this image for reference when i made my animataion lol? do you think i should change to a lighter pallette, i think im a little to far on the dark side to make noticable changes that seem correct with how close to acctual black my pallette is. thanks so much for you time :3
Yeah I downloaded your sprite and noticed that even the lighter colors are too dark. Are you making your own palette or did you get this one from another person?
You can get palettes here:
https://lospec.com/palette-list
Using a lighter palette is not something you must do, but one thing I use to do is keep testing lots of palettes and chosing the one I liked most.
Make the changes on the sprite and then choose your palette, I believe you will get better results and if you want you can share the results so we take another look
I know how frustrating it can be to look for a solution and nobody helps. I am not an expert on pixel art, actually, usually I am the one who makes the questions but I've seen many people asking about walk cycles so I can give some tips.
Larger pixel ratios takes too much time, if you are a beginner I think your sprite size is ok. Small px ratios are easier but I dont think this helps (personal opinion). If you keep working on your sprites the way they are you will get better and in the future you probably will remake them all, I keep doing this unfortunately.
I know that feeling but while coding may look like something you have to spend a life long time to learn, its not true. I started using Unity not long ago and stopped the online course in 50% of it.
As you saw I cold make a game and submit it to a Jam, so I believe you are able to do the same. Just take your time to learn things before starting for real, thats what I would say. Also, if you think Unity is too hard there are visual script engines like Construct, ClickTeam Fusion, G-develop and others.
Thanks for all your compliments, the good side of using an engine that uses code is that you can use what you learn for other languages, also you have more freedom to make what you want. I like to learn unity in my free time so my progress takes to long to be noticed, I'm sure you will have great results sooner than you think.