Young pixel artist looking for critique!

[Ambivorous]

Glow and a comparison image of glow and no glow (5 second intervals):


This isn't exactly how I'd do it, but the idea is this:
Inside the area you want to "glow" you need to add two similar colours at pretty much maximum saturation. Use the darker one around the edges and the lighter inside (pillow shading). This gives an effect of overexposure if I'm not mistaken. To add to the effect, increase the brightness of the pixels right next to your glowing object (including outlines). In this example I only changed the hue of the colours around most of the areas, but yellow has a higher effective brightness than blue, so it worked. Again this is to force the feeling of overexposure.
In games they call this bloom I'm pretty sure.
I had to add 4 colours. Which makes me a bad person.

Play around with stuff like this to see what happens when you put pixels of different hues and saturations (and obviously values) next to one another.



I liked this edit of yours. It's the closest you have to a clean piece, but I agree with Manupix - more contrast still.

[Probo]

had some fun with your sprite! gave it a bit of colour

[LarkoftheRiver]

I cannot help thinking that the yellow ring pokémon you are editing and reediting as an exercise is too small. Too small for decorations like the rings (Manupix already observed that they are a complication and an obstacle, but they are also too small to look good) and too small for the short of shading you are trying to do. Look at the foreleg of the last iteration: 3 pixels wide, with bands reducing to 1 pixel columns. You seem to be attempting a bad middle ground between large sprites that allow outlines and shading and small sprites that allow simple shapes.
Maybe you could try redrawing at the same size with only two shades of blue-gray, simplifying shading and shapes where you don't have enough pixels (e.g. jaw and legs), and/or scaling the same picture to double size with similar shading but better pixel clusters (e.g. more eye-shaped eyes, asymmetrical right ear, smaller left ear).

Sorry but.. I didn't really understand that post at all. Basically, the markings are too small, then, and I should enlarge the sprite? How do I do that in Photoshop without causing it to get blurry? (I know there's a way, at least on the computers at school with CS6)

Glow and a comparison image of glow and no glow (5 second intervals):


This isn't exactly how I'd do it, but the idea is this:
Inside the area you want to "glow" you need to add two similar colours at pretty much maximum saturation. Use the darker one around the edges and the lighter inside (pillow shading). This gives an effect of overexposure if I'm not mistaken. To add to the effect, increase the brightness of the pixels right next to your glowing object (including outlines). In this example I only changed the hue of the colours around most of the areas, but yellow has a higher effective brightness than blue, so it worked. Again this is to force the feeling of overexposure.
In games they call this bloom I'm pretty sure.
I had to add 4 colours. Which makes me a bad person.

Play around with stuff like this to see what happens when you put pixels of different hues and saturations (and obviously values) next to one another.

Oh, okay. I'll play around with this a bit. ^^

I liked this edit of yours. It's the closest you have to a clean piece, but I agree with Manupix - more contrast still.

Thank you! I added some more highlights in the next edit, did I mess up the form again, though?

had some fun with your sprite! gave it a bit of colour

Oh, its so pretty! I think I get some more things about shading now, thank you for the visuals!

[Manupix]

How do I do that in Photoshop without causing it to get blurry?

Image / Image size / 200%, resampling = Nearest Neighbor.

Of course you'll have to rework all the detail by hand to get rid of the 2x2 pixels. It's probably better to redraw everything from scratch anyway. Artists should never shy away from restarting their work as many times as necessary

However, this sprite has the right size for practice, except for that glow thing which isn't helpful IMO 

[LarkoftheRiver]

Okay, thank you. I was just wondering for future reference, I'm keeping the sprite the same size for now ^^

Okay, I removed the yellow markings to correct the form and shading problems (I'll add them back later). Any better?


(not sure if this is allowed but double posting)
I've edited it a bit.
W/ shine/gold markings-
w/out shine/gold markings-
I also added more lights.