Ok so I finally forced myself to put in the effort for a 1.8 skin and now I understand how to do it! It's a proud day for me. So I haven't made any non-teen skins really so I'm introducing a new era of my skinning. I'm back to sci-fi skins, etc, and back to a 5 color palette because 4 was too simple. 
Anyway I'm really happy with how this came out but if you could give me feedback in the comments that would be amazing!

1.6 version: (it's the same but without the body hat layer obv)