I personally laughed at beholders comment but it was just to give them an idea of it, and you have a good point Zerith, but it was just to help people to not make mistakes, you said "old work" what shading style do you use now?

and plus i agree good line art is what plays a major roll in the outcome, but this is a shading tutorial, not a line art tutorial.  

Ahhh sorry for the lineart input my friend! Very good shading tutorial though. Breaks it down A-B-C style. Hmm...allow me to make a correction to myself. Pillow Shading at most times can be pretty terrible unless the light source that you designate comes directly towards them and pillow shading can also look pretty ugly on large images. So correction is, use pillow shading on the least occasions and keep the shading simple. I shade in layers...ex, I start off with the darkest shade and work my way to the lightest, picturing and getting a "feel" of where the light source may hit the object. You'll get the hang of it.  

nice job !

+rep <3  

Yeah i see your point but in most graal related things its in the top left corner, so pillow shading is dreadful hah, but in anything else if it has a good reason then it works fine :]
thanks for the feedback though

thanks Taka =]  

Even though theres people on graalians who use Dithering, do not consider it a main shading technique... Ever..

Dithering is best used on Larger objects. I just zoomed out your iceberg and it didn't look pretty to be honest.

Second, More colors = More detail
4 colors is basic. There are very detailed sprites that requires possibly more colors.. But for graalians, its highly recommended to keep the colors around 4-5 so i don't have a problem with the colors

Third, the direction of your light source is straight up just shining from the side.
You colored one entire side in a light color... Do not put so much light like that..

And last but not least, its best to experiment different styles but its not easy shading them aswell... Here:
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/8888/icebergy.png (Unsupported image host)
This is my try at re-shading the iceberg. Even though it may not look the best, i tried to put in a better variation of colors and better light source detail. No dithering was involved in it

Also, Tizzee posted up a shading tutorial about reshading and dithering a christmas hat so if you want to know how dithering should work, i suggest you look at his tutorial
http://www.myvideo.de/watch/8335391/..._the_Santa_Hat

Again, i see how you're trying to introduce shading techniques but for small objects: there are times when dithering is not recommend as a shading technique for those kind of things.  

will most defently try this out ! hope it works *crosses fingers*  

I'm gonna +rep you just because the tutorial is well layed out. Most of the factual informaton I already knew. But it's always good to re-learn something

Good Job.  

thanks for the help maikeru i understand where your coming from and thanks for the helpful comments

and also, it wasn't actually supposed to be an iceberg.. as in shaded in a way, that's more of a texture, the whole point was the shading style. i also didn't say that it has to be the only shading style.