Some of my handy work.

[Gors]

Yeah. Your sprites are bad. BUT, everuone needs to have a start, be it good or not. Your biggest problem is shading: you don't seen to know its basics. You're doing pillowshading, which isn't a good technique. It makes your sprite flat (because objects has a light side and a dark side, basically). You need to fix a lightsource and shade using that as a reference. About the Kool-Aid man, well, you got some of the basic shading right: you shaded only one side instead of shading all the sides; but you did dithering instead of an actual color (dithering is when you use two colors in a way that makes them to blend). While dithering is acceptable in some cases (when shading stuff with irregular surface, like an orange), it won't work for smooth stuff, like glass.

Also, what Devicho said.