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Here is a sprite of Chun-Li (the fact that it's a Chun-Li sprite has no real significance, I could have chosen almost any sprite from lots of games, but I like to play favorites).
Here I've zoomed in on her left thigh, those little black things are supposed to be arrows. Notice how they point to the edges of the thigh (technical term is the contour of her thigh). Also notice that along the contour there's a bunch of dark pixels. Imagine that there was one dark outline all along the contour of her thighs, this would be similar to a regular black outline if you colored the sprite in a different style. But looking at the Capcom sprite, we can tell that there are parts of the outline that are lighter and darker. This can be very confusing at first, logic dictates that outlines are just one color, usually black. This works fine in drawings, comics, and cartoons, but in pixel art it's a whole other story.
This is a big reason Capcom, SNK, and other professional game sprites look so good, this funky, seemly random shading inside the outline. The keyword is "seemingly" -- after the studying I've done, I've found out a few things about how to do it. I'll do my best to explain it as clearly as possible.
I encourage you to find as many sprites as possible and study them up close. Look for this pattern and I'm sure you'll be surprised how often it shows up.
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