Congrats for the improves!
Good bg, I like the composition of values you gave it, its light adds depth to the image, even though it's formal.

You might still give it some attention, on some points Helm raised and others.

Edit in 4 steps:



- saturate the portrait, colors are a bit flat against that bg;
- darken and redden hair. Not sure about redden, don't see from the photo what your real color is!
- important: recycle colors! I did it very grossly with the paint bucket, to hair and shirt, with some greens from bg. You get the idea. This will really unite the different parts of your pic. Do it also between hair and face colors which are separate ramps now.
- even more important: get that dithering under control! There's far too much of it, and far too systematic. I tried that quickly on the face. I think this piece needs a little of it, but this is the moment where each single pixel you add must be checked at 100 or 200%, and ditched if unnecessary! I didn't do it carefully enough: you have to check the effect on the lines, shapes, shading, and texture of the face.

This portrait really deserves the effort you did / will put in it! =)

Lovely stuff!
Are the sprites and scene related?

I think you should darken the scene ground more.
Light on it would be highly lateral at a short distance, and the slightest roughness would cast shadows. Both would make the stones more lit than the ground they're standing on, as you have it on the far left.

Found these refs, not exactly what I would have wanted but I think they show my point.

Foreground highlights on the stones look too light.

I think you deliberately avoided blue shadows and background. I think you're right!

Thanks guys.
Steve, that's epic! Next thing I learn is vector drawing.  

I followed most of your advice, starting from a redrawn, rounder arms ellipse and cleaner lines.
2 versions of snake, 2 versions of tilt with some distortion too.
I think I prefer the snake with its head. The tilt brought some unwelcome transparencies again.  

(Btw, there isn't a way to free-transform (in photoshop) without auto AA, is there?)

Also tried 2 'cooler' color versions; interesting but not there yet.




Then I experimented a bit with color reductions. Some interesting options there, especially with the greyish/brownish tones.





Awwright, this is drifting further and further away from pixels, I'm sorry about that. The end product will be pure pixels, I promise!  
Even so, if you mods wish to move this thread to a more appropriate place, I won't mind!

Edit: forgot to put numbers on the images for further discussion.

First row:
1  2  3  4

2nd and 3rd rows:
5   6   7   8
9  10  11  12

Beautiful!

One thing: the tree looks isometric, or at least slightly from above, but the bg seems viewed slightly from under.