Actually, that was deliberate - he carefully antialiased all of the edges to make it better blend into the background, and also to eliminate the more jagged curves along the edge. Given that he only used two or three different levels of transparency, and only used them at the points where edge lines are diagonal, it should (re: does) actually compress very well with png.neoriceisgood wrote:Someone might want to de-blur that sprite, It's good for both filesize and for making it easier for people to edit it for clothes etcetera.
This is an advanced technique, designed to eliminate the harsh edges that occur when you go against the grain of a square pixel system - I believe it is used by Ragnarok Online, to help their little sprite people blend in with the rather differently constructed environs rendered behind them.
Not to mention, but, uhm - people won't actually be editing this sprite for clothes - clothes will be overlaid on this sprite as a separate image, since people will be buying multiple articles of clothing and having several of them actually displayed in-game, a la Diablo (one feature this game will have over the original SOM).
So, that would be a bad thing to do.