Looks awesome! I think chibi ones will look better if you deepen the shadows and try to hue-shift them more currently they look a bit bland but thats just my personal taste.
Either one of these would be fine, also with the bottom image you may want to fix the right paw's perspective on the front view. Other then that its up to you what you want to add as long as artists can clearly see how all the detail is laid out.
I would give Little Witch Academia a watch if you Netflix. To this date it has been one of my favorite anime thanks to its beautiful colors and animation, music score, and a story I found pretty heartwarming.
I would continue practicing shading and color. Theres others who can explain shading better then me but if you want I can explain color a bit and I'll also try my best to explain some things. References use them they always help you build up a visual library and every artist uses them (I even asked an artist I watched last night and he still uses them despite having a good visual library). Don't know how a fold on clothing should look, look at images. I would also do some studies on how some people shade, it might even be easier to just instead of trying to shade realistically at first instead doing some simple shading first and work up to that point. Finally practice, the more you practice the better you will get. Sorry for a bit of info dump here, hope it helps!
McSkin3D should be pretty much the only thing you need but I would also pair it up with either Gimp, Paint.net, or Krita (being using Krita just recently and its has a awesome color wheel I suggest looking at).
Might be a pretty long list but my favorite canon characters: Admiral Ackbar, Bossk, Darth Maul, Vader, Tarkin, and the entire 501st. As for non canon my favorites there are Kyle Katarn, Darth Malak, Revan, and Delta Squad.
So far I haven't been having problem with the results turning out darker just only as stated by several artists that when adding the color with an overlay layer the colors will appear dull.
