Some thoughts about color and shading.
Let's take a look at your zombie girl for a moment :
What did you want to convey ? 1. dead skin, 2. decomposing/wounded areas.
Now what did you actually do ? I'm gonna guess 1. You picked a skin color and desaturated/added some brown, 2. You added lines and dithering to create a texture.
1. Palette, color count, shadingRight now your sprite has 38 different colors. That is way too much and unnecessary, to show that I've brought it down using Gimp's "Indexed Mode" to just 5 :
Not much difference right ?
A
low color count is better in pixel art, to maintain visual
coherence/reduce noise, but also to maintain
control over your palette (let's say you want to make your zombie girl red, you'll have 5 colors to swap instead of 38 !).
Now about the shading :
-
Pick a lightsource- Stick to it
- Think of your object as a 3D object, with volumes, and of
how light hits it- Drop unnecessary gradient effects with lots of very close variations of a same color and prefer a
couple of values with good contrast - pixel art loves contrast.
- Volumes : avoid representing them through lines, but through
light.To quote Pistachio about this last thing :
I see a lot of outlines and not enough shadows on forms
Here's an edit :
It's not perfect, but I tried sticking to the lightsource I chose (left-side), notice how the sprite is a lot less flat than before.
About the lines VS light thing, look at her boob.
About the choice of colors :
I agree with Yrizoud, try using preset palettes to get used to the contrast between colors, the use of colors you wouldn't have thought of...
Now, wanna represent dead, disgusting zombie skin ? You could add grey/brown to regular skintone. Or you could make the shadows increasignly greenish, the possibilities are unlimited.
2. TextureTexture representation is one of the hardest things in pixel art: with a very limited resolution you have to convey a specific texture to the viewer. Pixel art also follows different rules than traditional art. When with paint you can use a thousand different shades of green for a single object, with pixel art it'll just look noisy and bad.
What you did with dithering to convey decomposing skin reads as noise instead.
I suggest you read through
this very interesting Pixelation topic ; to quote Atnas's eye-opening explanation about a fox's fur :
You're all about the contours. You don't seem to grasp this "fur" you're trying to render, because perhaps you don't understand yet: it is just more fox. [...] you add some texture on top, like it's a 3d model. It's not. It's all fox.
Think about the texture you wish to represent as just being
more zombie. A not really good edit, but maybe you'll kinda get the idea :
I tried representing decomposing skin on her elbow and leg -> for that I drew some skin "flaps" that detach from her body.
That's it *whew* hope this will help you find ways to progress.