If I'm perfectly honest with you, KK Moloney, then I'm going to say that these sprites are rushed and don't look good. I suggest you take your time with spriting; like any other art, you need to start simple and work your way up. Even if it seems noobish, practice simple recolouring, and discover which colours go where. You'll also notice how official sprites are shaded, and once you're confident with proper recolouring (I wouldn't really use the Eraser trick at this stage), you can move onto simple fusing. Learn how to make pieces morph together well, and then try your hand at something like revamping, where you can shade yourself, edit anatomy to look correct and if you just gradually work your way up, pushing yourself little by little and expanding your horizons, you'll soon be able to make top-notch sprites. But that's in the future. If you want to jump straight into the deep end, then be my guest. Here's some crit for your current fakemon:
The pose is alright on this one, but still not good. If you observe official Pokémon sprites, they (almost) always face the bottom left; the faces are in three-quarter view most of the time, meaning you can see part of the opposite side, as well.
In this case, you have drawn Crinchaw in a profile position (although the feet seem to contradict this, as they seem to be pointing towards us.). If you try referring to official sprites, you'll get the gist of proper orientation.
Take a loot at Chatot's HG/SS sprite, which is in a similar pose to your fakemon here.
As you can see, although it is slightly profile, you can see some of the other side of the sprite.
It has depth, which is not only because of the lineart/pose, but
also because of the shading, which brings me onto my next point. The shading on Crinchaw isn't great at all. Again, referring back to Chatot, it has a sense of curved shading which contributes to said depth. For a more detailed explanation of how to make natural shading, why not check out Chesu's stickied tutorials. Again, checking out official sprites will help there.
Finally, the colouring on this sprite doesn't look natural, is too saturated and needs to become more natural. Perhaps try taking colours from Xatu?
As you can see, it has nice greens and nice yellows that aren't hard on the eyes. Understand?
I'm assuming this lil' fella here is supposed to be made out of some sort of slime? Unfortunately, I only came to that conclusion because of the name (it just comes across as "slime") and the fact that it's green, which, like Crinchaw, is pretty ugly (no, the tongue isn't an exception I'm afraid). I can't stress enough how helpful nabbing and referring to stuff from the official sprites can be. Not only can you get good colours from there, but you could also check out the likes of Grimer
(I intentionally chose the shiny version as it's green) and Gulpin
, depending on what kind of slimy texture you want (the former being constantly liquidy, the former being some sort of blob). I can ensure that by doing this you'll get better results if you study how they're done. The pose on Chuwa, though, is rather good in comparison to Crinchaw.
As with Chuwa, which I didn't mention there, the mouth doesn't look like a mouth, but more like a red blob sellotaped on their face. The eyes are pure black, which would look better if you added some of the dark outline in. Again, checking Grimer and the likes for drawing slime would help. Nice detail with the little blob that fell off though. Finally, don't you think the design is a bit...bare? I mean, there's nothing that makes it look special, or good. :/
Do you like green? :D
Anyway, the legs are nicely positioned, but pretty much everything else, pose-wise, isn't. It'd be better if the head was facing the opponent sprite (i.e the bottom-left). Anyway, colours are again a problem. The black has too little contrast, and the green the opposite. Once again, checking the official sprites'll help. Also, the red thing (hair?) looks flat, and like paper. I don't think that's the desired texture. Zoroark would be a helpful reference for that.
When I first saw this, I couldn't spot out where the face was. Why it has a beak I'll never know, but at least the orientation of this sprite is nice, but the lineart isn't, unfortunately. This pose looks mighty uncomfortable and unnatural, with high shoulder and what seems like a broken neck. Furthermore, the outline of the tail seems very jagged. Which isn't good in pixel art. Perhaps looking at something like Mew would help? Kudos to you for trying to be original with the design/pattern, but I think it'd look nicer with some anti-aliasing (that may be a tad advanced for you now, though, so I wouldn't fret too much over it). Again, checking official sprites for colour references would be a great help.
As for your new concepts, they look pretty basic and non-Pokémon, including the eyes. Again, the orientation with this is pretty dodgy, so try and make it face the bottom-left. Perhaps you should check some references of logs in the right orientation to get a good idea of how to draw these guys' pose.
...wow, I won't be surprised if you don't read this.
-Crinchaw
-Chuwa
-Chuwemus
-Floyot
-Voutlo
