Edit:

I looked at some relevant swords and shields and realized that it would be cooler if he were holding a larger, flatter shield.  The hilt shouldn't be that protruding either.

The second one looks very nice, the palette gives it a grim look (it's quite cold and whatnot)

Thanks, grim sounds just like how I want it.

In the palette, you have many colors that are too similar in value.  This leads to redundancies in your piece.  Also you should consider how your sprite will fare on different colored backgrounds.  For example, Pixelation's background is quite neutral and yet your sprite is having trouble showing up against it.

Thanks for the feedback.  I think I managed to space the colors a bit and I even eliminated one.  I also added some outlines to try to attack the problem with blending in with the background.

Yes, he's wearing a necklace but it's not going to be glowing in shadow.  And yes he has strands of hair but we don't need to see them individually when zoomed out like so.  I gave it an outline, which is up to you obviously.  But at 1x, mine's showing up more clearly.  Another thing you should get in the habit of is recycling colors.  The brown on the pants and the purple on the shield for example.  We know his shirt is not brown, or purple.  But put them in between the light and dark shades of green, and the transition is much smoother and the shirt still reads green.

The necklace I really should've gotten right from the start, thanks for pointing it out.  The strands in the hair I'd like to keep, I think of some kind of dreads-like thing going on, maybe dirt or something. At any rate, he doesn't have a steady supply of soap.  I really like how you can magic colors around like that and want to learn how to pull it off, so thanks for that input too.

What kind of game are you considering?

Nothing that special, just some personal project for honing my programming and pixeling skills.  I'm thinking a platformer with some special sparring moves involving the shield.