a slight colour edit, and tweaking of the face and feet. tis very nice!

Your edit seems to have completely changed her expression. She is no longer happy in yours.

I like the less noisy background more, but maybe you could add more detail to the ground to bring more interest into the entire piece?
(While not detracting from it, as the background did before)

I figured I'd go with the more 'Strider-like anime ninja in a futuristic setting'.

I love this one, it's so full of action and movement. Plus it looks like it is straight out of a GBA/DS game!

I'm not really experienced at all with spriting, but I've been roaming around these forums the past couple days and doing so has been making me want to try.
A lot of people have self portraits, so I thought I would try one myself.

I tried to do some of that magical dithering stuff...

So, here's what I have so far. If you have any tips, please do share. I think I'm going to try to determine my palette in full before continuing...
I don't know if that's how people normally do it or if they create it as they go along, but it's getting really annoying to make it as I go along.


First:
The hand currently sucks. The only thing that looks at all decent is the neck.

Second:
A little more work done...
I don't think the hand looks so bad, I added basic shading to the face to give a better general idea of the whole picture.

Third:
Added dither stuff to the face, nose and eyes look better now I think... I need to lighten the colors of the lips.

By "filled square tool" you mean a 2x2 block brush thing?