Need alot of help with skull (WIP)

[fxokz]

Basically im trying to improve my pixel art by creating whatever comes into mind, this time it was a skull.. i tried drawing one and leveling all of the features and copying the best i could but it still seems to look bad.. i dont know whether its my color choices or just poor decision making that has resulted in this abysmal piece. Im open to constructive criticism and even better versions if you guys have the time ofcoarse 

I think i cant get the skulls expression nor can i properly trace out the shape. Im also having a hard time making the teeth look less geometric and more natural. I really need your guyses help. How should i begin to make a skull? Is there anything that makes you think "WTF IS THIS" if so please tell me. Thank you.



Reference piece:

[fxokz]

I found a way to properly recreate the skull as pixel art but the thing is i dont know how vaild it feels because i literally just onion skinned it and traced over it and recolored it. SOMEONE HAAALP.. i dont even know if this is copyrightable

[eishiya]

Tracing is a nice way to get the hang of shadows. Instead of worrying about whether you can call this your own, why not only use it for practice to understand the lighting in the original image, and then do the finished piece from scratch?
Plenty of artists use tricks like this as learning aids, and it only becomes a problem if you A. pass it off as completely your own work, or B. use it as a crutch instead of learning from it.

[Bollie]

You should pay more attention to the shadows and how they can show the form of the object. Also, your skull looks noisy, try using less single pixels.
Here is my edit 

P.S. There is no need to scale up your image, pixelation has an inbuilt feature for that (Click!)!

[fxokz]

Oh my lord.... every time i see an edit i just want to cry.

EDIT:


I tried to make it look more like yours bollie but somehow it still seems retarded xd how do you get such a good shape and idea on what to do, like the way you added the lighting and different colors?

[Night]

To begin with, you would be better off using a real skull as reference, such as this one:
(big image)
Spoiler

In regards to the shading, attempt to imagine the shape of the skull in 3D ;this should be easier with reference as opposed to without, too.

A way you could go about imagining this rather complex shape is by subdividing it into simpler shapes; such as a sphere for the braincase, two planes for the nasal bone, a cut in half cone for the sunken area of the zygomatic, etc. (picture 3).
This way you could approximate as to where shadows are cast and where light is shone, and also at that, to what extent.
However, keep in mind that these are merely simplifications to help you imagine the way it looks like better geometrically to a basic level, and do only so much in terms of imitating the actual shapes they represent; so don't solely rely on it.

For instance, the braincase isn't exactly a sphere, or even oval for that matter. This is particularly evident when you look at the area behind the frontal zygomatic process (the column shaped bone to the side of the eye socket), where you notice a depression.

In terms of colour, the problem is that the second lightest colour is too light in comparison to the rest of the palette, I'd suggest to tone it down a notch (picture 1 & 2). Also, it wouldn't hurt to add a couple more colours to the mix.

As a side note. It'd be better if you used a more neutral colour for your background, and not something so extreme as pitch black. The rule I go by is if I'm planning to draw a bright object, the background colour will fluctuate to dark (so dark grey for example), whereas if I want to draw a dark object, the background colour will shift more towards light (light grey for example).

[fxokz]

Im not going to lie, at this point i definitely feel as if my skull is getting worse. I tried implementing all of your advice/feedback and i got this 

[Bollie]

It's getting better! The only thing is, now you can't really see the teeth on the upper jaw

[fxokz]

this is my final edit of the skull before im going to leave it as it is. i made the teeth more visible

[Bollie]

Great job   

[Night]

The latest edit is certainly looking better.

this is my final edit of the skull before im going to leave it as it is.

I'll try to make it quick then.

Perhaps I've went a bit too far ahead with my previous suggestion, as it would require you to already have some knowledge in light and form in order to apply. Also, despite the fact that I view it more as a mental exercise, something you don't actually draw but imagine in your mind while you're drawing, which in itself you get a feel for after a while; I think that it would be useful for you to practice and study some basic shapes (cubes, pyramids, spheres, etc.) in order to start getting the hang/feel for light and form.
It goes without saying, but you're not going to improve overnight, so don't give up if it doesn't look good in the beginning.



I'll approach this in a slightly different way.
Notice where I placed the highlights in the edit in my previous post, they correspond to where the light is at its strongest; or in other words, where the skull is perpendicular to the light. A good way to show this would be to take a profile of a skull, and extend light rays from the direction that light comes from, as shown in image 1; I've marked the areas where the skull is perpendicular to the light in red to illustrate better what I mean.
The same is true for shadows just the over way around: the less perpendicular the skull is to the light, the darker it'll be (this is without involving reflection in the mix however).

In image 2 I just wanted to demonstrate that the further the object is from the light the darker it is, even if it's on the same plane, however, the contrast between the darkest and lightest spot on a single plane, as shown in the example, is determined by the size of the light source. So if we take the sun as an example, the difference is going to be quite minute; if we take a lamp for example though, the difference is going to be very visible.
In image 1 and 2 the difference is closer to the one caused by the sun, with image 1 being an even better representation.

The problem arises when you want to depict a 3 dimensional object in a 2 dimensional space, and that is solved only through practice and study.

I do hope though that this perhaps helped you, or will help you, understand light and form a little better. The problems in your skull are not so much related to pixel art as they are to artistic ability itself.