I have never gotten the chance to see Full Metal Alchemist, but nonetheless this piece caught my eye in its perfection when it popped into my inbox. One thing about it was it's proportions. Though this isn't seen quite as often as I would like to in the pixel art community, you kept the original character's proportions and stayed quite true to their original size. This is what made this piece stand out for me most when I started my critique.

Starting with Alphonse, you did fantastically. I know as well as the next artist that scaling down complex armor to a smaller scale is quite challenging, but I can see little detail, aside from the spikes on his forearm, that was squandered in scaling him down. Also, looking closer, I can see that you skipped out on most of his facial details, but that is quite acceptable as the lineart on his face in the anime is quite fine and detailed. It may just be my reference, but it appears that when you drew Ed you made him...per say, much more vivid! In the anime he is a quite dull teal, almost to the point of being gray. Being repixeled in your trademark style, we can see that there are small shades of blue and yellow hidden among his armor, reused from other areas in the picture. The recycling of this color shows that as an artist, you have a mature sense of coherency and unity within your drawings. Not to mention, you also added a few red highlights on various parts of Ed's body, which I am amazed he did not have originally, as they would have been an excellent addition to his character design. A small thing...I can see a small stray pixel on his right leg and it detracts the eye so should be fixed...but I digress...To sum it all up, you literally took Alphonse, were unsatisfied with his dull palette, then breathed a new life into him by redrawing him in your style. Putting some sort of a new twist on popular characters is what Fan Art is all about, and you did an amazing job of this.

Next we have the regal looking Edward to our right. Unfortunately, unlike Alphonse it appears much of his character was lost along with his resolution. His face is indeed clear, but it lacks, per say, his usual confident and determined visage, which I am seeing constantly throughout all of my pictures of him. As I'm sure you know, the face attracts the most attention in the piece of the art, and looking back at Alphonse now I can see that you could have done a bit better at interpreting their faces at low resolution. Edwards hair, it also seems, it a bit too curved and not nearly as sharp as it was originally. This could be easily fixed by changing the curvature of the top of his bangs and making them more vertical. On the other hand, the rest of his body looks fantastic and as usual, excellently colored. His vest is now a vibrant blood-red and his boots are now clearly separate from the rest of his clothes with a brownish hue. His belt, jacket highlights and gloves also stand out crystal-clear, and need no improvement.

You did a great job on pixeling both of these characters, and if I was a fan of the show I'm sure I would be quite proud to see something as high a caliber as this. Personally, I would love to see how far you can take this with a mockup. You have a good start right here. Overall, you did fantastically at interpreting their clothes, but not their character...And yet...it is debatable! Would it have not been possible to draw their faces with more personality at this low resolution? Is it possible that the graphical limits of this pixel art is preventing the artist from correctly interpreting their ideas? These are all questions we must ask ourselves when we endeavor in this finicky digital art! Though the medium is quite limited in it's nature, we as artists should push ourselves and bring the medium to it's full potential, which I am convinced our fantastic artist JinnDemonEvil is very close to achieving.