Some slight edits.




I began by softening ever so slightly the philtrum, and went the other way with the upper lip, trying to make it a bit sharper as it's what I gather from the references...
Then I tried to make her chin a little wider while making the side of her face a little less bumpy.

Then eeehh... I added a bit of highlight to the nose. Dunno if it's correct, but, y'know, felt like doing it.

The highlights on her ponytail looked too regular, so I made them... more irregular.

And lastly, I futzed with her hairline a little bit, bringing some hair over her temple.

Oh, and I removed one pixel from her left eye, because it looked like a stray.

There's something there that still feels masculine. I wonder if it's the nose to mouth lines.


EDIT; Maybe it's the chin..?



Gah, I don't know!

I gave it some time to see if someone with better expertise would show up to give their opinions, but I guess you're stuck with me! xD

So, about adding more colors... I think it's fine. If you stick to whichever small amount of colors you think is reasonable... I mean, ultimately it's your call, right? It does feel weird to me, though (and that's just my personal preference) when shading in a pixel art image is too smooth. So, IMHO, and to my eyes, your newer image looks better.

The mouth is hard, isn't it? It gave me a lot of trouble too. You might want to try to do straight copies your references to try and get a feel for how to represent it and her other features in this piece (though not necessarily in pixel art).
Her eyes look thinner to me, so for that, your older version, from these last two, is a bit more accurate.

As for the ponytail, if you decide to keep it in the front and over her shoulder, with your extra colors you could probably smooth it out like the strands in front of her face, even using some pink; I think it would catch some of that light.
Some people don't like "too much AA" in pixel art, but I mean, the colors are there, why not use them? Unless you set for yourself other restrictions, like only having a certain number of colors per "cell" (8x8/16x16 area)...

That is quite an improvement!

Ah I see, I had a bad feeling when I was trying to post my image. (Btw, I'm using the Pixly app on my phone and exporting images from Pixly to Imgur to here is a technical puzzle I'm trying to figure out. Otherwise, I need to find an alternative Imgur site. Sorry about the deleted image, still figuring this out:(  )

Imgur is fine. In fact, here on Pixelation it is the preferred website to have your images uploaded onto. I use it all the time.

I don't remember how you do it on a phone, but uploading there from a computer (or simply pasting the image, which does the same) allows you to get a link to post into forums. If you hover the image, a button for a dropdown menu shows up, and there you click on "Get share links", then copy the "BBCode (Forums)" code. There's probably an alternative to do that on a phone, probably even an easier way.

Anyways, I look forward to your next posts!

I tried my hand at Triss, doing to usual shameless cheating just so I could get the proportions as close as I could, only trying to translate it to pixel art using your colors... Or to be more specific, I reduced the image and pixelated over yours while looking at the now smaller reference.



What I got from that was that the shape of her head (including the hair) is pretty round kinda like you did, but it tapers off a bit at the top.
You can see that if you try to fit a circle inside of the head, like:



Kind of like an apple seen from the front, but turned upside down, maybe?

Also notice how much her head is tilting:


(edit: threw in a couple plumb lines.)


And the jawline isn't as pointy. Adding more to the sides would make it look more like her, I think.

I worked a little more on Dandelion too. Now I think that the previous smirk was a tad too strong, so I tried making it a little more subdued with a shorter 'stache.



Maybe throw in some of that light purple for good measure?