[WIP] Witch + Teddy Bear

[Crispy]

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.

[JonathanOfDrain]

The teddy bear could benefit from some cleaner line work and volume. The colors are boring on that straight ramp and you can probably get rid of that black.

The witch has outlines at some places and no lines are others. The inconsistency hurts it a little. I think the purple could use more contrast and the blue and yellow could also use nicer color ramps.

[Crispy]

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, I'm new here so I'm not really sure what you're suggesting, so I've got a couple of questions:
 - Cleaner line work I understand, but how would I go about adding "volume" to the teddy bear? Change the shading to make it more round, or something?
 - Not quite sure what you mean about the straight ramp... and yeah,the black is pretty unnecessary.
 - I'll work on the consistency now, I think it's the legs that ruin it. And again, not sure what you mean by colour ramps. =/

Thanks again for the critique.

[Rollerkingdom]

I gotta say the Teddy bear looks rlly GOOD! but there is something from the with that bothers me..
HER ARMS.. they look soo short!

[balls01]

i think the lines are very messy on the teddy bear, and the contrast i dong think is realistic.

[JonathanOfDrain]

You might want to go back to your second step. Get rid of jagged lines and get an idea of how a real teddy bear looks.
Imagine a teddy bear made out of a cotton/jersey material. It's not shiny and it's one color. Now imagine the direction of light and the parts that light will hit. The top of his head, cheeks (if he has extra fluffy cheeks), nose, top of eyes and ears. Since this is bear isn't made of tin foil or shiny plastic the contrast isn't going to be outrageous, it's fairly tame. Each color from the darkest is only a bit lighter.
Quick side note, contrast just means the difference between two things. Grey and vibrant violet are contrasting in saturation of color/hue. Black and White are contrasting in value. When people talk about contrast they're usually referring to the value. I'm sorry if that's old information

My colors move from a dark brown to a light desaturated yellow-orange. Your color ramps are always just a lighter or darker version of the original color. Adding a little bit of another color to the shading or highlights can really make the piece look more interesting.

I hope I helped, it's a little late here so if I didn't make sense with anything please just tell me. I can't wait to see an upgrade on your bear.

EDIT:
Keep an eye on how many colors yo use. Your last bear has 11, mine as 6.

[Crispy]

Wow, that post has seriously helped a lot, JonathanOfDrain. Thank you.

Using your edit as a source of shading reference (I think I know now how to fix up the jagged lines I have in all my pixel art), I've come up with these:





I think it looks a million times better than before, and you're right - it was kind of shiny and smooth before, not squeezable like teddy bears should be.

The last three are really just me playing around with colours, as well as adding a tear in the teddy fabric. I want to get the variety in colour to get it more interesting to look at, but I find it makes the teddy a little too vibrant and colourful, and I really want to get that dilapidated look. Anyway, what I've found is that having a large-ish gap in contrast between the lightest and second-lightest shades gives the teddy bear a "creepier" look (the last one), which is what I want. It's like as if there has been a flash of lightning or something, and I think it would go well in a haunted house sort of setting (like my witch! ).

C+C is as always very welcome. Now, back to work on the witch and the dress folds of doom.