Hi all! This is my first sort-of-but-not-really serious piece of pixel art I've ever even tried to finish. I've been browsing these forums VERY sporadically (4 times a year? lol), and just recently gave the time to read some of the spriting tutorials.
Anyway, the witch was pretty much just a random doodle that came to near-life, and I gave her a pet teddy bear using the Voodoo doll enemies from Maple Story as a loose reference.
As you can see, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW TO SHADE! Particularly on the witch's dress. I Google Image'd "dress" and "witch dress" for reference material, but I just can't seem to get the folds and shades down. It's already quite impractical with the spiral bits on the ends (bit of a spiral theme going) so I figured for it be able to do that, the material for the dress has to be somewhat coarse/strong and therefore quite weighty. So it wouldn't fold so much and so deep... or something. Is there a shade or way to shade something like that? Because I have no idea.
Also, she's supposed to be folding her arms while wearing black, elbow-length gloves. I tried to get some hands in there but that failed miserably. Later on, when I start animating it, the gloves will come to life i.e. they can metamorphose into any weapon she desires. So basically her forearms can change into claws, guns, swords etc.
I like how the hat turned out, and I'm yet to work on the hair. I kinda like how the hair is already, but leaving it as is will no doubt make the whole thing look weird as it only has 2 colours atm.
This one I'm actually quite satisfied with. I mean the shading makes sense, right? And it gives off the creepy vibe I was going for. As you can see (along with the Witch) I experimented a bit with the colouring to depart from the drab look it had before. Did it come out good?
Suggestions on how to improve these would be much appreciated!
EDIT:
I think I improved some aspects of the shading, but it still looks weird to me. =/
EDIT 2:
Vastly improved teddy bear with the help of JonathanOfDrain.