Biggest thing I see is the dithering. Dithering typically doesn't work well at all on something so small, usually you'd dither to give the illusion that there's an in-between color, but in this case the contrast is too high and the area too small for it to work. Also, the colors are very bright and saturated, I would tone it down, unless you're going for the retro CGA look...

And as for graphics gale, I guess it could be a lot of things, are you changing the transparency of the frame, as opposed to the layer? I believe only the former will get you transparency when saved.

I finally beat Spelunky! I am pathetic! But it feels so good! 

The knees here are definitely lower than Loomis' knees anyway. In my opinion, the head is way too small as well. He's approximately 8 1/4 heads tall, which is a bit much, I'd say.

Here's an edit I did on the boss, just messing around with it for about half an hour or so, didn't have enough time to go in depth with the anatomy so I make no guarantees on the accuracy there. The trick to make things look metal though is high contrast. Bright speculars and dark shadows. With muscles, it's important not to get this idea that they are all separate and distinct blocks. Remember that muscles are all intertwined and woven together willy-nilly, so when you're looking at the skin stretched across them it creates a lot of interesting surfaces and angles, rather than separate groups. Don't look at my anatomy here for an example of that, I don't think I got it very correct, and I don't have enough time to go through it in detail. :-(



Also played the alpha you posted and I think it looks pretty good so far. It would be nice if you could move while crouching though.

Whoah. Don't know how I missed that...

Fixed.