I'll work on the pose.  I was considering having the cyclops in an attack posture, prepared to slash at the player if he/she makes a hostile move, but I was a bit unsure of whether I could successfully pull it off using the space and viewpoint I was provided.  Now that I've decided to simply use a larger picture then crop, I'll have a go at making a "don't try anything" pose.

I was actually hoping that the size difference between the head and waist would be interpreted as perspective.  Its head, body, and waist are relatively thin, though it is a bit top-heavy, with a bit of a gorilla's body.  Here's what I was trying to go for from profile view (albeit with a slightly off scale):

d-''''''-...
   P      ''p
  1       /
 M        1
          A

Yeah, it's a living creature, but it also happens to be one that was created artificially through genetic engineering, like a robot made out of organic material.  Basically, imagine Frankenstein's monster making another monster in its likeness.  I'll try to redraw it so that it doesn't look too mirrored.  It'll take me a little while, though, since I have a 12-page paper to write for my Intro to Networking class that's due in about three days.  I'll also reread the sections of pixel art tutorials that cover shading.

I apologize for the neon.  I didn't know what colors the creature is supposed to use at the time I posted it (I've since learned that the skin of it is a sandy brown color, with an emerald-colored eye), so I went with the colors used by the game's templates.  Nothing in the game actually appears as those colors.  They're used in the game as placeholders for the real colors.  The engine gets kinda unpredictable when it encounters other inputted shades, like purples or oranges.  Not even the chief programmer knows what it'll do sometimes, since the function that does the pallette-swapping is actually one that comes with the SDL library.    The revision of it that I'll post up in a couple days will use different colors.

The cyclops, from the text description I was given, is supposed to be part of a line of mobile bioweapons.  The particular cyclops posted is actually a second-generation one.  I was hoping to bring out the idea that it's an artificial being created by other artificial beings.  Their limbs are supposed to be quite long, with their body posture resembling a gorilla.  I was trying to make the cyclops in the portrait look like it's hunched over in order to make eye-contact with the player.  The two swords it's wielding are living swords.  The game lists them as "armor-piercing", so I was trying to make it look like they might literally chew through armor.  Another variant has living rifles attached to mounting points on its back.  They have no hands nor feet.  Instead, their arms and legs end in bundles of manipulative tentacles, with another set of tendrils positioned with their mouths underneath their lidless eyes.  To the sides of the eye are speaker-like membranes, which give its speech a tinny stereo sound.

The game is found at http://gearhead.roguelikedevelopment.org/, if that helps any.

Edit:  I'm still working on revising the portrait, but here's what I've got at the moment. 

I've switched from Paint to GraphicsGale, and I'm planning on redrawing the arms to not take up as much space.  I'm also trying to make the shading more consistent, with a light source above the character.