Hmm that's a nice edit Fullbert but its meant to be a side on platformer so it kinda doesn't work.

I thought it was. Of course, if it were a running animation, for example, it would have to be side-view, but for an idle stance that one could work.
Anyway, Pistachio's one is much more professionally done:-)

The picture doesn't seem to load.

You might want to lean his body forward a little, that would give the animation some energy.
As for the arms, the latest version looks as if he is working out, like stretching his waist or something. This one - - isn't so bad, really. If you make him throw his arms forwards instead of upwards, that might look even better.

There's also a problem with legs. I tried to fix it for you. Not perfect, but I think you'll see what I mean.


Or you could keep things basically as they are. This animation looks comic, and if that's what you're going for it, then you've succeded:-)

P.S. Shading the farther leg would be a good idea, too, I guess.

With the pelvis rocking about like this, the whole character is going to jerk and shake while running. The body should be more or less stable for the resulting animation to look right.
And I'd try and animate the whole character, not just his legs. Maybe even in some sort of a specialized animation programme, like Flipbook or Abobe Flash, just to make things easier for yourself. You can always scale the result down and make it into a pixel animation later.

The character itself is okay, I think. The sprite face looks skewed, but that can be fixed with the new base. I'd suggest that you stayed true to the reference picture. The girl's outfit looks interesting with those glasses and gauntlets and braces. Try to represent that in the sprite.