Really cool design, but there are some things that majorly take away from it.
The dithering doesn't benefit it at all. i assume you tried to imply a dirty, rocked out kind of texture, which is pretty hard to do at that scale without single pixel noise. i certainly don't know how to do it
Speaking of single pixels, the brown dots are really just distracting from the design. is it rust, scratches, dents? if in doubt, leave them out, sometimes less is more.
Your general design looks like something out of dragonball. the bulky armor parts with round edges remind me of quite a lot of the designs you can find there. Look at cell, or the robot that small goku finds in the pirate cave. However the hooks, clamps or whatever look detached and don't fit the general purpose of the droid. They look lost and without purpose. I tried to integrate them into the arms so it looks like they have a specific use.
A technological touch can be achieved through several things. Using materials/shading that reflects the actual thing (i.e. metal/polymers for a droid) and hint at seams where platings connect or add hard edges for lighting and shadows to imply that its not a soft surface.
for your coloring method, i wouldnt consider it cheating, as this is a method that is used in digital painting a lot (at least in a similar sense). However, simply darkening or lightening a color to shade and highlight will create a dull and muddy feeling. Shades tend towards cooler colors, while highlights tend towards warm colors (although this has a lot to do with the environment surrounding the object, but its a good general rule of thumb).
Anyways, couldn't prevent myself from editing this. Like i said, really cool design
