I drew my inkling from Splatoon, and Fauna from Animal Crossing: New Leaf, plus some tips on using SAI Paint Tool

My inkling:

based off of:

except she was blue when I drew her ;)

And here is Fauna (drawn from memory):

Here is what she should look like:

You can see I got quite a few things off haha

I used SAI Paint Tool for the drawings.

I use a flat brush imported into the program (I don't remember where I got mine anymore, but you can find some here that look good!) to draw the character. I also uploaded the brushes I used with Oyster. Since it has a 5MB limit right now, I had to put it in multiple .rar files. Here are the links:

1 2 3 4 5

For the first pic, I went more for solid shapes which I then blended shades over later. For adding shades in SAI, you will generally want to

1. Create a new layer right above the base layer
2. Check on "Clipping Group" (it is on the left-hand side, above the layers menu) This makes it so you can only draw on top of what is already drawn on the bottom layer
3. Draw your shaded areas. I recommend using a color for this instead of grey/black. For example, try using reds, oranges and pinks for shading in skin.
4. Select a different option for "Mode"
   a. Multiply and Shade are common for darker shades
   b. Screen, Overlay, Luminosity, and Lumi & Shade are common for lighter (my personal fave is Lumi & Shade)
5. Lower the opacity. I recommend playing with the slider until you're happy. If you're getting stuck choosing between like, 51% vs 52%, quickly slide the slider from 0 to 100 and back a bunch of times until you settle on where you like it best (it just helps you see the full perspective of what it could look like at different values)
6. If you want, blend it with the blending brush

For the second pic, I blended as I went along by using short brush strokes and setting the brush settings to allow blending of colors. The character is all on one later, and the background is all on a second layer. Usually people draw on multiple layers when doing digital art, but I think it's nice to try drawing things on one layer sometimes 'cause it gets you to try to accomplish a similar goal but in a different way, so you get to play with your style a bit.

I definitely recommend experimenting with all kinds of things! Art gives you the opportunity to explore different styles, mediums, techniques -- so take the opportunity to play around with your drawing! :)