Community Pixel Hut (General Sprite Thread)

[Virt]

I tried to improve the technical aspects while maintaining some of the cartoony appeal (and accidentally making it look like a character from a Mother game :V) and also not make fun of the "dark soulless eyes" or the picture in general
(uses 16 colors)
But yeah, some important things to remember are to carefully place your pixels, work more on basic art things (character design, color choice, etc) and not use things like gradient and blur effects. Those only make your piece look disjointed. You can also smooth out lines using anti-aliasing.
I'm sure you'll get better with more practice! Don't get discouraged. Just keep working hard!