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.

This is the main character who is based very, very heavily off Marvin from HHGTTG. I've named him Marv. Keep in mind I have no experience in spriting, and this is pretty much the first character I've ever even tried to finish.

Background story on my game for those interested: Marv is an outdated janitor robot. Displeased and unsatisfied with his position as second-class citizen aboard the gigantic [insert name here] (which is basically a huge city inside an equally huge spaceship. It's got like trees and doors and everything.), he manages to somehow find himself in a position where he can just jump off the damn thing and end it all. Well, he does, and as a result floats off into the distance and... I haven't thought it through any more than that. He'll probably land on various planets doing various things. >_>

Anyway... I want to get the basic standing sprite down before I start doing animations, but there's a few things I don't like about the sprite that I was hoping some of you could help me with.

- The shading seems a little too simplistic, but I have no idea how to improve it.
- The front and back views just look weird. I tried making it skinnier or fatter or something but it always just looks plain off.
- I couldn't get the legs and feet to look consistent for all the sides. There are some other things that go in and out of proportion too. A little help in getting perspective right would be much appreciated.

There are probably more flaws I'm not aware of, but that's where you come in.


Okay, these are a couple more sprites I've done.

 


So what we've got here are the current model of robot on board the [name], complete with NO arms OR legs. Rayman robots, pretty much. And then there are some possible faces and emotions the robots could have. Based slightly off Gir from Invader Zim.


Any and all help improving these sprites will be much appreciated. ^_^