Ok first things first, sprite movies will never ever be the same standard as drawn movies (well, at least the good ones), I'm trying to bridge the gap slightly by introducing more and more techniques. Despite me going this a lot of people still do certain sprite taboo's that I personally despise*, I can't force you to stop doing them, but it will help in there being better quality sprite movies.

*I used to do all of these, and hated myself for it.

Clashing bits
What I mean by this is having 8-bit sprites in the same scene at 16-bit sprites or 32-bit sprites. Just don't do it, it makes the movie feel really tacky and very inconsistent, if anyone actually needs it, here are the different bits-

8-bit:
The Atari consoles (2600, 5200)
NES/famicom
Sega Master System
Gameboy /Colour (to an extent)

16-bit:
SNES/Super Famicom
Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
Turbografx
Neo Geo

32-bit:
Gameboy Advance

Those are the most commonly used consoles in terms of sprite movies, the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit for most games aren't that different, but still, it looks weird.

Clashing styles
This is similar to the previous taboo, but is far more limiting. In the most extreme cases, you should never EVER use Super Mario RPG sprites with Super Mario World sprites. Or ever use Metal Slug sprites with Sonic, or Mortal Kombat with A Link To The Past. The clashing styles are very apparent in these cases and look really weird. There are some styles that do work together, however, Super Mario World and Sonic 3 for the most part are similar, and Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter is acceptable when pulled off the right way.

Clashing sizes
Again, things clashing just look wrong, this is no exception, yet I have found this is a hard one to avoid with a big project. If you have two characters at the same resolution, yet one is half the size of the other, it is tempting to just double the size of the smaller sprite so the characters are the same size. This is, however, a bad idea. by doubling the size of one sprite is means that the pixels of the other sprite looks too detailed, therefore losing the consistent sprite style that sprite movies should have, I mean seriously if you are still making sprite movies that's obviously what you want to do, have the sprited style in your movies. Anyway, this is an easy way to destroy that style.

Same goes with ground sprites, enlarge them to the same size as the characters, backgrounds on the other hand, can get away with it.

Clashing sizes II: Revenge of the Sprite
Now this is in a similar vain to the last taboo, but this is about it taking place on the same sprite. It's tempting to edit the sprite in half pixels (by doubling the size and editing it that way) this also tends to destroy or at best hinder the sprite feel. Even though this means you can create a more precise edit with the sprites, it makes the sprite look inconsistent in places.

Make Your Own God Damn Sprites
No-one cares if you found a sweet flipping Mario animation, it's just lazy to take edited sprites from someone else and just using them in your movie. Now granted even I suck at making custom sprites. I only use other people's sprites if they aren't from the game. So I'd happily use 'Bowser Out Of His Koopa Car', but I wouldn't use anyone else's Mario fighting sprites. I mean come on; it's bad enough you're stealing the original sprites, now you want to steal already stolen sprites?

Separate limbs
Unless this is a style you are aiming for (see: Awesome Guy Adventures) having an arm separate from the main sprite and tweening that around does not look good, it's much betting to just sprite the arm moving rather than going the lazy way for tweening it around.

This one can't be easily avoided I know, I still do it with certain movies, conveying emotion in an 8-bit character is not the easiest thing to do, easier to tween the head to look down to suggest depression. Avoid where you can, anyway.

Black Box Of Lip Syncing DOOM
You've all done it, you need the character to talk, why not just put a block box and shape tween it around to show the mouth moving. Why? Cause it looks cheap. Lip syncing is the most annoying part of an animation for all movies, but you can always just use the simple '6 mouth' technique, this involves 6 different sprites for the mouths each with a different position for each sound. Closed mouth, Open mouth, Teeth clenched mouth, Circle mouth, Tongue mouth (for 'th') and Lips Together mouth (for 'ff'). Putting each of these on a different frame in a graphic means you can switch between them using the 'single frame' function the graphics have. I used this technique for 'Thwomps: The Movie', and it works so much better than a black box.

Hey look he hasn't even animated the waterfall
This is a common taboo, basically a lot of games, in the 16-bit era at least, the backgrounds are animated. Now not animating the background is stupid, in some games there are a lot of things going on in the background (Street Fighter 2) and having one image for it looks really tacky. You need to animate backgrounds to make the overall product look good. Now if you don't have access to an emulated version of the game that might be harder said than done, but if you make the effort the movie will look better.

Now that that is done, here are some pointers to make your movies better:

3D
Let us get this out of the way right off the bat, 3D effects look awesome if pulled off correctly. To pull it off correctly may need some practise but it's a great addition to a sprite movie. My latest movies (namely Spittin' Narcissism, Awesome Guy, even Two Slices of Pie) all have subtle 3D effects (SN backgrounds) and some not so subtle 3D effects (Awesome Guy.); yeah the basic 3D effect is made by skewing and rotating. It's hard to pinpoint what works and doesn't, so some experiments are needed with the backgrounds/items you want to make look 3D. Obviously skewing and rotating won't work with the characters or anything like that, for that you need custom sprites.

Custom Sprites
Speaking of custom sprites, these make the movie look overall better. Sure the movie works with Mario's basic jump sprite, but it'd look so much better with a custom crouch and jump animation.

Don't Use Mario
Yeah most of my recent movies are in the Marioverse, but it's still a bad idea. All popular characters (Mario, Sonic, and Megaman) are overused; it's really more fun for the viewer, and most of the time the animator, to use slightly more obscure characters like the Ice Climbers, Kid Icarus, and Bomberman. Sure these are still popular characters, but at least they're not that overused. A refreshing change. If you need to make it in a popular universe, the main character in the game doesn't have to be the main character for your movie. The Thwomps are a good example of this, taking a minor character from the games and giving them personalities is a good way to be that bit different.

I'll add more things when I feel like it.

Bear in mind this list is strictly for sprite movies, so it doesn't include my tastes for humour or anything like that, but since I brought it up; farting is not funny, and neither is animating Family Guy sound clips.

So yeah, that's really it, I know I can't stop people doing these, but in all seriousness, only like 5% of all sprite movies are actually good. People probably don't hate your sprite movie strictly because it's a sprite movie, it just isn't good, I seriously believe if people can make sprite movies of high quality then some of the criticism against sprite movies will be eliminated. Call it naive if you will but I don't care, sprite movies can't be as good as the high quality drawn movies and I've accepted that, but that doesn't mean EVERY drawn movie is better than EVERY sprite movie.

Also who else is there 'cept me? Like Alvin is still doing his thing I know that, Bigfoot3290 is apparently still in it. Then we've got the new kids on the block Araskin and PTHouse, they totally came out of nowhere.

~Psycosis