My custom Blue Pikmin Sprites

[Mashuga]

All good points. It seems to me not a whole lot of time went into this sprite, or you are just inexperienced.
Pick a direction your light source is coming from, and then stick to only a couple of colors for the shading. Try and make it look natural. Somewhere so that it doesnt look like a gradient and that it doesn't look like a heavy outline.

Edit: Here's a quick, rough example of what the shading could look like to improve. I went to the length of creating my own sprite to demonstrate.
See how the shading blends rather then just changes colors?



Spriting is an art form and it takes time to get just right. So don't worry if you're a beginner. It'll come soon enough with practice.