It's ambititous, but not impossible. This is how I would do it using your same palette, but in addition to this colors could be tweaked to cover wider value ranges.

I agree that making it higher res would make it stand out too much. If anything, having a less than ideal sprite is still better than mixed resolutions.

I can do an edit if you post the original as a PNG.

Very nice critique, Kowee.
I would also emphasize readability. I understand the desire to show details in a piece, but the rules change at low resolutions like this. Too much detail becomes noise, so you have to place it carefully. Conveying form is the higher priority here.

Hi Sen, welcome to Pixelation. 

I did a quick edit on your piece to show how it can be made more readable. It was a mistake to separate the shadow from the cables, as it is a cast shadow, and therefore physically impossible to be separate unless you want to imply that the cables are floating above the desk! I suspected they are not, and you will be happy to know that whether the intention was to remove aliasing or to imply a shadow makes little difference in this case.

However the monitor noticeably lacks a cast shadow, even though it is the tallest object on the desk. I also found that the cables were too messy, to the point that they are distracting from the whole piece. And where are they all going, exactly? I plugged them into the wall. Another issue was proportion, the mouse and monitor too small in relation to the keyboard. I enlarged them a bit, but this monitor can definitely be larger still.



As for how to improve in general, study light and shadow around you. Pencil and sketchbook, just draw whatever catches your eye in your room or around your house, find the shadows on and around objects. Study their form. It does not have to be perfect. But with just the act of practicing you will come to learn how light works.

Yes it's better this way, using an image host and [img] tags. It's important to save your pixel art in its original resolution, as PNG or GIF, never jpg. That way you preserve the crispness and the original palette, and others can edit your work (super helpful). On this forum you can click & ctrl+click to zoom images.

Ok first thought is nice flow with the hat, pose shows promise. And good job keeping your shapes clean and fairly readable.

What's detracting from it at this point is the proportions (legs in particular), and the features can be better defined, for example the eye sockets. That single white pixel at the bottom of the jacket is just noise. With this palette I'd use black and the pink more on the interior, because on a black background the white is really strong.