I am trying to make a mech, reference image on left of screenshot. I started with front toe by getting the general shape by dragging edges and faces around then applying a scale, then I started using ctrl b bevel willy-nilly, and also used a cut boolean on the tip. I then tried to shade smooth, and the shadows looked horrible, so I undid, tried an auto shade smooth. this was a bit better, still not satisfied, going to redo this part.

  
I then went to the next toe, right most toe, to try another approach, where I used bevel by weight, and was more careful with my beveling, and made sure to apply scale before any beveling. It looks much better, but I still am not super happy, shade smooth looked off. auto shade smooth looks decent (in my noob opinion). Still wondering if there are better practices, or if this was the right approach and there's just another step im missing after beveling to make sure shade smooth applies better?

I have started the calve armor, but just getting the shape and doing some extrusions. That's why im here, hopefully you guys can pick apart my previous attempts so I can move forward with a better approach on the rest of the mech. 

My previous post got taken down for crappy screenshots so hopefully this is good enough, I can come back and add more if you guys need!

Thank you in advance!

Having issues with shading after beveling, need advice on best practices.