Seeing this sprite earlier today, I couldn't help but try to give some critque or ideas of how to improve.
First of all, here's my edit of the shading to help explain things; puu.sh/hckvS.png
-You used a lot of colours to shade, which didn't give the shell much depth as the colours just blurred together with many of them being too similiar to eachother. Try to limit the amount of colours you use, starting off with trying to shade using only 3 shades (a light, a dark and a middle between those two) and then possibly add another shade to perhaps show the shell has a shine or something.
-The lines within the sprite don't match, as some are coloured while others are not. Try to stick with either having an all dark outline around each setion, or only around the edges. Maybe try no outlines at all if you're feeling adventurous!
-the light source is undefined, leading to some confusing choices with how some sections are shaded. a good tip is to put a light source somewhere around the sprite, then shade according to where that light source was set. Doesn't have to be fancy, I myself just use a small yellow circle to help guide me on where the lighting should be.
Overall though, you do have a good shape for this sprite (although some lines could use some smoothing out) So just keep practicing! I'm sure you'll get better in no time. Feel free to zoom in and take a look at how I've shaded mine for comparison!
wow, thanks so much for sharing this information :) I obviously am not experienced in shading etc. so thanks a lot ^^ I will keep this in mind when doing future pixel-art
I think it would help your shading if you used more contrast, especially in the white/grey colors, and if instead of treating the upper shell as a single object to be shaded, you treat each plate of the shell as its own object to be shaded.
First of all thank you so much for taking your time and even edit the sprite accordingly to your critique. I didn't even know you could make such great lighting effects with only three-four shades per colour. I really want to improve myself in that regard :). the inconsistency of the lines colours were a result of testing and trying around, because for example the white-thingy connecting both parts of the shell looked kinda weird to me, when I tried to outline it completely in black, so I coloured the upper outline blue to sort of fit in. I did not even think about leaving out the outline completely.y biggest problem with the light source was that I tried to make one from directly above and one directly below. But yeah your version definitely stands out more. Lighting and lighting sources are also new ground for me. :) when I started pixeling, I did not even try to add lighting and shadows. I think this is slowly catching up to me now :P I want to improve and I will show you that I can :) anyway thank you so much for taking your time again and hopefully, I will see you around. Bye :)