quickly, an edit on the reference:
--
changes:
* show all the 'base colors' for different surfaces, to try to illustrate what I was saying about flats. the proportions between the colors used in a region identify it visually (in terms of picture priority and material. Depth is more a matter where the proportions stay similar while the shades used change).
* fix the arm, hair, and shoe (remove banding). These are errors that I would identify as typical of slightly rushed work - I've found if you are going to reference from something that is not directly life, it's very important to check that it actually makes good sense on the whole.. I've duplicated errors in the past by failing to check that.
And here are some edits on your latest sprite:
(the text should be synchronized with the image, above)
With some additional comments:
* antigravity boobs are amusing. (it might help you to think of injecting a large amount of fat into your chest, over your pectoral muscles -- because the reality is not much different from that, in terms of biology and physics. The actual firmness of breasts is influenced by pectoral strength, but bags of fat flop and squish; The only way to avoid that is to have practically none).
I note Lina Inverse is listed in the card gallery (#044), her appearance of femininity doesn't seem to suffer from her chestly modesty, so you might want to take some cues from there. Mostly the CSW art seems to try to conceal boobage with complex clothing, only the extremely well endowed (morrigan, shiva) even obviously
have boobs.
* the shirt/jumper thing.. kcilc touched on this.. your current revision has slightly less bulge out in the surface of the shirt. I reduced this and actually made it look MORE form fitting (this is generally good -- pixel art tends to involve a lot of strategic exaggeration to convey features powerfully, similarly to comic art. The bulge I was talking about was not good, because it wasted pixels rather than conveying a consistent form -- it basically said to me HI I"M A BEVEL, SUP?.)
* strategic flatness: when you look at the 'squishier' step, you'll see I do that by making most of the skin
flatter and concentrating the highlights and curves.
* The pants. I find your version to lack definition and depth, while mine probably mismatches the style.
* Hair. Your current version looks floofier, more feminine, and more uniform,
mine is somewhat less feminine, changes shading according to angle, and IMO conforms to head shape better.
* kcilc is so right about the power of proportions between shades
* I've provided an example of how to fix the shoulder problem (IMO).. just a small shift inwards and some rounding.
* Good job on even doing style imitation. I hardly get around to doing that intentionally, myself. But it is a good ingredient for expanding your imagination's repetoire.
</ramble>
Edit: Awesome, the synchronized animation works.
Edit2: Here's a look at the palette. Some colors are used for only 1, 2, or 3 pixels. Other groups are so similar that it might be good to merge them. (the optimizations shown in the following image would reduce colorcount to <= 24, vs the current 31). YMMV because this might be a style thing. I do know that reducing the colorcount will allow you to make modifications quicker due to needing to track less colors.