For us to give you effective CC, you'll need to tell us what sort of Pixel art you're straining to, because you looked as if you went for kind of half realism half cartoon. Either way stick with one, not try both in the same. If you're gonna go for cartoons, go for a cartoon style as such. I think as cartoons go your Dharok thrusting his arms up in the air is awesome if not cute , and is a great start if that's what you're going for. I suggest browsing a few websites (such as DeviantART) and look there. You can either do for gradual shading, which you can achieve by varying the percentage of two+ colours in a certain area (e.g. to go from black to white, you'll have to do 100% B, 0% W, 90% B, 10% W, etc.), while keeping your assortment of original colours to a minimum to show you can get other colours but only having a small choice to achieve them - if you can do that it's a true show of skill. A second way I'd kind is vector shading or cel shading. In Vector shading, there are no graduations, or at least, there are distinct lines between each colour. Cel shading involves simply having one darker colour than the original; however, it's not that easier. There's a thin line between having cel shading make your pixel look professionally cartoony and making it look amateurish and that you have lacked to show any care to shading. Again, browsing a few websites will help you brush up on your skills. As for realism, you should again look through a few websites, except this time look for pictures of still life, big or small. If you're struggling on textures, search for such and download that picture. Find a program to resize your image to something manageable - something like 100 pixels wide/tall? Using that as reference attempt to redraw it using only basic colours and using gradual shading as I explained before. There's not much I can do except hint you in the right direction, but I wish you the best of luck achieving your desired results. ~Boz