Thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback, I really appreciate it!

Hope this small C+C adds to that motivation.

Yes! For sure!

1
I'm seeing a lot of black outlines here. You can get this right, but at this size it's better to use clusters (shapes) of pixels to describe details (esp those buttons), outlines hog more space the smaller you work.
Shading is a problem here. You're shading the DS screen like a round thing (sphere) when it's flat (cube). I see this a lot in beginner art, not just pixels. But maybe the outline > flat color > shaded workflow encourages this in the digital/pixel mediums especially, because you're looking at that outline without thinking about the forms they describe. Basically you want to learn to shade these things by planes before you break the shading rules. Try out a few ball/cube/cone shading exercises.

Excellent advice - I will try it. For the screen shading, I actually used a google image as a model and that's how the light seemed to be reflecting from the surfaces (didn't even think about how the shading might actually add volume to my work), but now I will. As far as outlines go, I will try to eliminate them for now and see how I can advance without relying on them too much, especially for small res stuff.

2
This is probably another example of outlines over planes = small details over the big picture. The biggest drawback is on the curtain wrinkles, because it sort of drowns out the players in 1px details when they should be the focal point. Try thinking in planes (see #1) or blocks of color, this makes it easier to think about how the curtains get hit by light, if there's a spotlight there, etc., and it could make this way more interesting.

Well here I think I just need to get better at colouring and mixing it up I think. Here's the image I used as a model:

3
Probably the best one color-wise but I still wanna see less reliance on outlines, and a little more perspective on the buildings.
Going forward it's gonna be worth it IMO for you to rely less on outlines and absorb the ancient trade of correct 3D shading. Simple stuff that pays off in the long run.

Roger that, thanks!

Thank you for your suggestion Nmb910. Unfortunately I didn't quite understand how interlaced dithering works and from what I saw in the example given there about 6 colors used, whereas I only have two at once. But I did expand the dithering a bit and I like how it looks now a bit better. Will get back as I advance:

Hello,

My story is probably already posted over a thousand times all over the place - I like to play games, I want to make games and for that I need to learn how to make pixel art.

Hopefully this place is as good as everyone advises and I will learn something and find a good community.

See you around!