Hold up. Night's example is the bronziest in the thread by far, you shouldn't just brush it off like that. First the colors can easily be tweaked to a higher key. Second, he outlined a process resulting in a balanced sprite.
The biggest issue with your sprite right now is its focus on the parts (delineating every single muscle) rather than the whole, resulting in a busy sprite. Everything is lit uniformly and there's no sense of priority.
Another suggestion is to draw the legs without the loincloth and then paint it on, because it doesn't seem like they're attaching as strongly as other legs in the thread, like the top half is teetering. I would either thicken the obliques or the abductors, or both.
Hope that helps, your sprite's coming along quite nicely.
And yea the other thing I like about Conceit's that he didn't mention is it's looming, hunched over, like a giant would be doing.