Hi,
I’m making some sprites 32x32 for a Pacman game I’m working on. I’m new at pixelart, so I would love to hear some feedback. Pacman’s sprite came out a bit wrong, but I’ll be looking more into that later. Thank you!
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The first biggest thing I think would help the cartoony style of Pacman would be to consider giving them more shading and a darker outline
For the Pac-Man, there is something weird down the middle area and the curve of the head is weirdly sharp (the correct ratio of curves tends to be a larger amount of pixels to a smaller amount back to a larger amount, with no clumps, or sharp changes.)
As far as the ghost it feels as though there was a missed opportunity to give their eyes the chance to move in any direction(I.E. up, down, left, right) either by making the eyes cutouts that get replaced in the engine or by having separate sprites for the direction they are facing.
If you want to get better at lighting try to remember the idea in quotes “” in the following text:
When it comes to colours, the two dark shades in the iris are difficult to distinguish from each other. One idea could be to use the same colour as their bodies for the more faded irises of the ghosts. I adjusted the eyeball colour by using the shadow of the teeth, which should enhance the highlights. Also, I thought that the light coming down from the top would go through a ghost(hypothetically) and would give it a more gelatinous underglow.
“Essentially, the goal is to emphasize the colours by ensuring that each one has a unique area and brightness difference.”
Also when thinking about Pac-man there are a couple of design ideas I would use(namely circles with triangle cutouts for eyes, and just triangles in general) and maybe the Jack-O-Lantern-esque face.
Here are some mockups of what the results could look like (for Blue Ghost and Pac-Man) Feel free to use any of the ideas here.
First sprites:
Here I thought about style a little more for Pac-Man, the colours are tricky if you want to keep it looking like the Iconic character. Blue or black eyes are consistent while the teeth if you aren’t careful kinda of make it look like an emoji.
Second sprites:
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I’m… actually kinda touched by this response. 
Not only did you give me some solid advice about the lighting, the expressions and drawing Pacman himself, but you went ahead and made several examples of what you meant (looks amazing btw).
That’s way more effort than I was expecting. THANK YOU!
It seems there’s a of of theory I’ll need to be looking into about shading, colour… and also style.
The eyes and expressions changing, based on movement and events is a feature that will definitely be added. I wanted to make a basic model for each character first, before making all of their sprites.
Thank you again!
PS: I’m curious… Have you done art for games before? You seem knowledgeable about it.
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Over time, art style and practicing a lot of art theory becomes second nature to you and while I have been creating art for projects for a long while I mostly just watched one too many tutorials. 
I remember when Pac-Man had a TV show and how that was different from the Pac-Man world games; which was different from the OG arcade games. It’s crazy how much variation you can get from a character whose base is just a yellow ball. 
Regarding the projects I’ve worked on you wouldn’t believe how many unused, vastly different pixel-size, assets I have. 
I enjoy seeing people create and will be looking forward to any future posts you might make. 
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By the way, I find the ghost’s expressions fun. Did you have a reference when creating them?
I had a somewhat chaotic approach to the ghost faces. 
I started off with the simplest design possible - two dots for the eyes and a line for the mouth… and after that I just started experimenting with what I can get away with, without breaking the palette and sprite size.
I’ll be reworking them a bit and I’ll be reworking Pacman a LOT.
Looking forward to posting the improved results! Cheers!