"There are many ways to go about giving colour and depth to your dolls. In this article I'll be showing how you can do that. Read more for explanations of pixelshading, dithering, toolshading and mutt-shading. How you can shade depends on your graphics program as well. When using Paint, it will be hard to toolshade, because you have no options of smudging or blending colours. Either way: read on for more information on how to shade pixel dolls." -taken from the web page.
Bunnystick has several great tutorials for using a basic paint program like Microsoft Paint to create pixel art and cartoon dolls. Includes color replacement, tracing bases, and shading, among other tutorials.
