Yes, it should show up on preview. For Imgur links, you want the link that has “i.” at the start and a file extension at the end like “.gif”. It’s referred to as the “direct link” to the image. For example, https://i.imgur.com/O9ncbfV.gif would be a direct link to the image whereas https://imgur.com/O9ncbfV is the page that the image is on. You can copy the direct link from the menu that comes up when you right click on the image.

Welcome! Your images weren’t showing up since you had the album URLs listed rather than the direct links to the images, so I fixed it for you.

I think you’re on the right track with this overall. The hue shifting you’ve done with the colors looks nice. All of the main shapes of your character are clear; you can tell what’s what.

The reason the shadows on the chest seem somewhat wrong is the positioning of the highlights. You’ve placed them directly in the middle of the shapes, but the way you’ve drawn the shadows and everything else imply the light source is higher up. It’s a simple fix - just move the highlights up a little bit. It’s ok if they touch the shadows on the front view since the 3D form is going in and then out again.

For the legs, the reason it feels off may be that you don’t have any shading right underneath where your character’s knees would be. Even though you’ve stylized the legs to be simpler than real legs so they work as pixel art, you can help the viewer fill in details by implying forms that would be there if your character was a real person. You could also increase the contrast between the two shades of black on his pants so it’s easier to see the shading.

You may also want to consider making the highlights on the arms slightly smaller, just on the front view. If you were to remove the bottom few pixels of the highlight, you could emphasize the bicep muscles more. Hopefully that makes sense - it’s a bit tricky to explain in words so if it’s unclear what I mean just let me know.

Nice work so far and good luck with your game idea!

I think you have the general right idea here. All of the areas of your character are lit from the same angle. You have some cast shadows (such as the shadow the sleeve is casting on the arm, or the shadow the arm is casting on the shirt) and form shadows (such as on the hand and shoe, giving more dimension as the form turns). You seem to be using some hue shifting. You’ve clearly separated each part of the body with use of color and value.

There are some very minor things you could adjust to help give more dimension to certain areas. The shadow you have around the knee area is currently flat at the bottom but you could add a little bit more shadow on the top left of where his calf starts to show that it’s a round/cylindrical form.

You could possibly add a cast shadow from his hand onto his pants; same thing for his shirt, if it’s not tightly tucked into his pants.

The medium color shadow you’ve used on his shirt could be refined a little bit. It’s not completely clear if the shadow by his armpit is a wrinkle (slightly too drastic - could tone it down by a pixel) or the pectoral muscle (too high up if so). It’s not clear if the jagged part of the shadow corresponds to the bottom of his ribcage or if it’s just a fold in the fabric - you could either drop the whole area in shadow to imply a plane change below the ribcage, or just smooth out that part of the shadow to simplify the shape of it.

Implying detail within a small character is a difficult thing to do but I think you’re on the right track.

No problem! Those are two really broad topics I'm still learning about myself, but both are really fun! Here are some tips.

Proportions seem really tricky at first, but they get easier as you figure out some generalized proportions you can use to measure with. Proportions are relative in art so you can usually check to make sure your proportions are accurate by comparing them to other parts of your drawing. One good reference for learning proportions is Andrew Loomis' books. His breakdowns are rather complex, but pretty rigorous and nice if you need accuracy. Some convenient measurements I like to use to ballpark proportions are that the upper body and lower body are roughly equal in height, the eyeline or browridge is roughly halfway down the face, and the fingertips roughly reach midway down the thighs when the arms are straight. Another commonly used form of measurement is heads tall, which is useful for keeping characters' heights consistent or making a character look a certain age or cuteness. Then you can use your convenient generalized measurements to make a more specific character. For example, lowering the eyeline can make a character look cute like in this drawing here. Characters come in so many different shapes and sizes, and it's fun to experiment.

Color is controlled by the light source(s) and environment. An arbitrary example of this is that if you had an environment which was mostly green, and a light source that was warm (as opposed to neutral or cold), your character might look like it was tinted green (because light bounces off the green surfaces onto your character) and you might see highlights that are yellowish or orangeish. On the other hand, if the light source was cold, perhaps you would see highlights that are more cyan. The basis behind "hue shifting" that pixel artists use for color is just the manipulation of light sources and the environment to get an interesting looking color scheme that gets your intent across (color serves functions like communicating mood and making characters stand out from or blend into the environment). Light works off a system called additive color and there are theories as to which colors naturally look nice together (color theory). You can play around with color schemes on sites like Paletton to get a feel for what you think looks cool.

If you need me to explain anything I've said in more detail or if something is unclear, just let me know and I'd be happy to break it down more.

Happy 2019! Better late than never, right? You can post about anything here that doesn't quite fit anywhere else or deserve its own thread.

Last year's thread is here.