Pixel doggo

[AppleGirl]

Hey,
I made this pixel art doggo, and I was wondering if I should give it more texture or shading. I'm just learning how to make pixel art, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. (Side note: He has three legs).

[hexcode]

Hi, nice first try.
I'd say the first thing I'd do is reduce your colors down to about 6, you currently are using 40 colors. Maybe because you traced it from an image or something? (EDIT: It's because you saved as a .jpg. Save pixel art as .png or .gif)
Secondly, work on your lines. You have a lot of harsh, blocky line-work on your dark lines. There are some pretty good to follow rules out there about perception of the eye and how that relates to pixel art line work. I'm sure we at Pixelation.org have a tut, but here is one from another forum anyway. http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
Please other members advise... on loction of linework tuts.

Thirdly, once you've organised your colors a bit better and understand your line work more, start thinking about  how you can add some shading. Pick a position of the light source and the light direction for starters, then you could add some more colors to make the lighting bring out the features on your sprite.

I'd also make the eyes a bit bigger. Smaller sprites usualy include a lot of expression/interpretation ranther than 1:1 reality.

Have fun

[AppleGirl]

I was only using about 5 colors, I think when I made it a jpg it added a bunch of colors. Thanks for all the information, I will definitely check out the link you provided! 

[AppleGirl]

I changed the colors I was using before. Should I do more shading, or just leave it?

[hexcode]

Hi AppleGirl, Sorry are you able to repost as a .png or a .gif? As it's really hard to read the .jpg due to the artifacting:
http://blog.topazlabs.com/jpeg-artifacts-vs-image-noise/