Where to Start?

[AceDecade]

I've never been much of a spriter, but I've recently undertaken a retro project and want to do at least some of the pixel art for it myself. So I sat down and drew out the first resource I'll need for the game. The result is posted below, and I'm not exactly happy with it. I'm not sure if anyone can offer any advice that will help someone of my inexperience, but what I'm really looking for is some guidance in learning to draw pixel backgrounds and characters. If you have any tutorials, guides, resources, or advice for newbies, I'd appreciate it if you could share it here. Thank you!

Here's pretty much all I can do with my experience:

Specifically for this sprite, I think I've gotten the details and general shape right, it just seems to be lacking depth and style.

Edit: I've just discovered the resource thread, and will browse through it, so let's focus more on advice and less on finding tutorials.

[CodeCriminal]

Depth - Add more shadow and light
Style - Add more detail

In this piece it looks very flat because of the lack of shading, our eyes can only conclude that the shapes you are trying to convey are 2D rectangles with some beveled edges, get some practice on shading (either on paper or pixel) plus use of color, Hue saturation and lightness. for example, the tanks of liquid could use a darker shade nearing the center (not to dark) just to give it some variation and depth, when your shading it remeber the refraction of light with liquids, so dont just go and draw another solid block of colour in the center of the tanks, wave it about a bit.

Cant comment much on detail, it maybe that your sketch on papaer was not detailed enough and so neither is the pixel art. check your sketch again, try shading in details such as bumps and scratches maybe, a warning sticker or two, a control panel? I dont know, what ever you want.

There also seems to be various hot spots for 'jaggies' in this piece, research jaggies and why they are bad (also research banding).

EDIT: Also, for each core piece your only using like 1-3 colours, or 1-2. try 5 - 6 on a piece this big (different shades of the same colour that is).

[AceDecade]

Thanks! I'll definitely take all that into account! I like the warning sticker idea, and I'll look up jaggies for sure!