KYoujin's works

[kyoujin]

[Star]

See..why can't we have nice things like this all the time?

[Previous]

Needs more contrast and a bunch of lines need to be cleaned, there are several jaggies (eg Yoshi's nose, neck, butt). Moreover I'd suggest not to use a pure black outline here.
Yoshi's arm is too straight, give him an elbow. He also lacks some hips, the legs just dop out of his body.

[kyoujin]

here's an update i kept yoshis arm a bit straight because he's sticking them straight out

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

the colors you're using are exceptionally dark, dull, and lacking in contrast... except for the shades of white, which look fine. why is everything so gloomy except the white?

try brightening up everything except white just a bit and seeing what happens.

[kyoujin]

how about now

[Thumbtacks]

Looks better.

But try a lot more brightness

[kyoujin]

I'll add the body in there soon but how does it look so far?

[Hoeloe]

There's a lot of pillow shading, and not much attention paid to the light source. Don't just shade around the edges of the object - try using it to show the shape of it, but also pay attention to where the light is coming from. For most of this piece, it's coming from the top left. so why doesn't the nose cast a shadow on the rest of his face? Why is there shading on the inside of his cheek, which is pointing towards the light?

[kyoujin]

i was attempting something but it got out of hand

[Previous]

A few of your shades have barely any contrast. I think you could go with less colors anyways. No need for six shades of green plus outline, seven shades of grey...
You should consider hue shifting: Don't stick to the same color value for all of your shades of one color. Shift brighter shades of green towards yellow and darker shades towards blue, for example.
Furthermore your colors are all rather dull.

[kyoujin]

this is just a fail attempt at trying to sprite 3d

[NICKtendo DS]

this is just a fail attempt at trying to sprite 3d

Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?
Every sprite is 2D, a lot of them fake 3D or are renders of 3D models. You can't sprite 3D, because you draw on a 2D plane (or it's rendered as a 2D image). Saying you fail at spriting 3D is a meaningless excuse, because that basically means you fail at spriting in general.

That said, every sprite using shading, be it 2 or 20 colors, obey the same rules. Look at the cheek; it is round like the nose. Try to shade the cheek more like the nose.

[kyoujin]

you have a way with words alright i'll continue this piece and make it look much better

[Cobalt Blue]

odd enough, this is nothing but an eyeballed trace of the oficial artwork.
wich basically means he's not going to improve that shading, since he'll just stick to it and gradient his way.