Looking for [C+C] on my first attempts at pixeling!

[0w0]

Ok so these are my first 2 pixel pieces and man...I enjoy the process but I feel like I'm really struggling! Something just looks...off about both of them but I'm not familiar enough with this method to know what's wrong.  I would absolutely love any pointers I could get!

The 2nd one is 4 colors. Let me know if I left out any necessary info in this post! Thanks for lookin!

[Pusty]

Is this a space cat? :O

Lights on the second one looks kinda off (but I'm not good enough to try to fix it o.O)
and I think banding is happening here (I just read a post about it so I'm not sure how explain it nor how to fix it)

Well I wasn't a help was I.. well I at least tried ^^

[0w0]

Thanks!! The cat is Cookie Cat from Steven Universe. I have only a vague idea of what banding is/have a hard time understanding what a good alternative to it is but I'll try to do do more research to figure it out and then maybe fix what I've got.  I think I'm probably just going to take out the yellow part on his outfit as well because I think it'd be better without any shading at all (idk why I added that honestly??)

[Gil]

Good call on the banding Pusty, there's indeed a lot of banding going on in the cat.

0w0: You're not going to find a better tutorial on banding than this:
http://www.pixel.schlet.net/

The type of banding most prevalent in yours is the one marked F