Made Togepi...

You're good, really good!

Made Jigglypuff...

i seriously reccommend you to check on the shading, because it always looks pillowshaded

Those sprites would be really enjoyable if they weren't pillow shaded.

pillowshaddddinnnng

The sprites aren't pillow shaded, that's just how the lighting is. The problem with Jigglypuff is around the edges.
Here, I'll show you

When you're applying anti aliasing on circles, make sure you make the darker shade lighter as you get towards
the peak of the curves, to the point that there isn't any there at all. This makes the circle look curvier if the
line art is done correctly as well. There's a great tutorial online that I found right here.

There is a bit of pillow shading on the feet however, but I think that's because you tried cramming too many
colours in it. You can easily fix this by either having less colours overall, or using less colours specifically in
small spaces.

However, your pixel art is really coming along nicely. The fact that you used AA in the first place indicates
that you know what you're doing. Keep it up!

thank you i was just about to say this

Made Jigglypuff...

Does it look better now?

Fancy makes a good point, but it definitely shouldn't be ignored that there is too much dark shading. The fact that it looks like pillow-shading isn't good at all, because blown up is the only way to tell due to the similarity in and amount of colors. The lighting direction makes sense, right, but definitely should be tweaked to not be as dark, or perhaps done in a more fitting direction. Light from the front is generally frowned upon in the first place.

I hope you don't mind, but I decided to go ahead and tweak your jigglypuff to show what
things I think could be improved on it:

This way, instead of explaining things that could be fixed upon, you can just look at see for yourself. If there's anything
you don't understand on my edit, or need help with anything, I'm always here to explain!
Sorry again if you don't like me editing your work, I just think you have a lot of potential and I'd hate to see it go to waste
because you didn't receive enough help.

EDIT:

Not necessarily. The problem with pillow shading isn't that the light source is frontal, but because it ignores three
dimensional lighting. Here's a good example from the tutorial I linked before:

I thought I'd hand out my slice of advice. Please don't be offended, as I only want to help.



As you can see I too have adjusting your Jiggly. I've provided three steps that will universally help you with future sprites. I'm gonna explain what each step is made of - as these are the steps I follow for my sprites.

The very first thing I did was create a brand new palette. I've gone from your previous 7 shades, to 5. I've made the shades very gradual so the colours don't appear so contrasting next to each other. Also to note, I've dedicated a really dark shade of pink to be my outline - and ONLY my outline. These leaves me with 4 shades to play with.

Step 1: I've gone back to your original sprite and simplified it to its' outline. I went and made Jiggly's sprite a lot more rounded so it's silhouette resembled the balloon Pokemon itself.

Also to note, I've adjusted the back ear so a little bit of it is hidden behind his body. This displays depth in your sprite before moving onto any shades. It'd hard to really work around a 3D character in sprites. The best piece of advice I can give you is to pull-up as many reference images you need to get the best idea how your characters silhouette should look in the pose you've created.

Step 2: I looked at your original sprites lighting. The biggest thing that leads to pillow shading is the misunderstanding of light. I imagine where a light source will be shining on my character. For most static sprites, it's easiest to imagine a light source shining on it front on, down onto the character. For now, get your outline and paint out where you want the brightest shade of pink to be according to your light source.

It's obvious you were going alone those lines as your sprite does have some correct highlights. As mentioned by the others, the biggest issue was your Anti-Aliasing. Because your colour palette was previously 6 shades, I can understand how frustrating it must be fiddling with all those different shades. THIS is my reason why I simplified how many shades you should have in your palette.

Step 3: Go nuts.

I'm kinda not kidding here. Play around with your shades, work out how dark you want some areas to be because of the light source. Keep everything simplified at first, just 2 shades...then move onto 3 and VERY lightly make use of your 4th.

I've also made it apparent in my image that for anything that isn't getting much light (like the back ear and back leg), just don't use the brightest colour on your pallete. There's no rules in the spriting world saying you need to use your entire range of colours on each section of the body. So play around with what you think looks right.

I hope this helps you out with your future pieces of work. Can't wait to see more from you

^ this. this is exactly why you should never over use color.

color is soooo important. you could never reach that sort of cleanliness with 10 different shades of pink. The anti-aliasing in perfect, the lighting is great.. really an amazing example of what an edit should be and how constructive criticism can be given.

You really went above and beyond with this one. Great explanation for how shading and colors should work.

EDIT:

And Fancy, notice how I said generally. That skull picture from the shading tutorial is commonly used to prove that, but the reason frontal lighting is usually frowned upon is because the angle is hard to do correctly without pillow shading or losing detail. Never said frontal lighting was pillow shading, but it can very well become it if your ignore a few pixels.

Thank you!

I've been with the MG forums for years. Unfortunately I've been distant because of life and other passions, but it's kinda sad seeing how one sided C+C is these days. The community has died off and not enough support is shown to the ones who need it. I could see how passionate you and Fancy were, it's great to see! However, the others commenting with "Pillowshading" isn't AT ALL helpful.

Forum: "A meeting or medium where IDEAS and VIEWS on a particular issue can be exchanged."

Also Nintendo. It's great seeing you improve the more you do. Please keep going!
If you find you're having trouble, ask for help from everyone.

Questions like;

How's the Palette?
What seems off?
Could someone help me with the eyes?

We all want to get better at spriting at the end of the day. Perhaps getting our help can inspire you.

excellent tutorial! i'll be using this for future reference

oh my goodness that edit looks sooooo good