Compositionally, you have multiple elements fighting for attention, i.e. there’s no clear visual hierarchy for what you want the viewer to be looking at. It’s a bit more obvious looking at the piece in monochrome:



Currently, the (near) dead center of the picture and the very bottom right have about equal visual weight, with the light of the background and the slightly higher contrast on the left side (thanks to the dark silhouettes bordering the light) causing the eye to sweep mostly horizontally and dart between the two high contrast points. The composition is also relatively symmetrical. (It may be worth noting that the horizontalness and evenness could imply calmness or staticness - but the color scheme seems to speak otherwise.) It’s kind of hard to describe all of this in text, so if I’m not being clear, let me know.

Naturally, the viewer will look at areas of high contrast first and then the flow and contrast of the rest of the piece will dictate what they look at next. You usually either want to “trap” the viewer’s eye in a visually interesting path which loops, or guide them to the point where the next action will take place (if in a video or animated format).

May I ask what the focal point is intended to be, and your intention for the picture, so that it’s easier to suggest how you can get your intentions for the piece across?

I think the issues you have with GraphicsGale and Aseprite are potentially solvable:

GraphicsGale does have project files - just go to File > Save As and use the .gal file extension. Furthermore, you can import .gif files, as well as from sprite sheets (although for sprite sheets, I believe each frame will be imported at the same exposure). I don’t think there’s much you can do for the interface, unfortunately.

Aseprite has themes if you dislike the default GUI like I do - Minimal Dark seems to be one of the most popular themes.

You could maybe try Pyxel Edit as well; the interface seems most similar to PS out of the pixel art programs I’ve tried so maybe it’d be useful. You can work on an animation directly to a sprite sheet, which is a pretty cool feature not many programs have.

But if none of these particularly help your workflow, I don’t see any issue with working on your own editor that suits your specific needs, or working on some extensions for existing programs. It’s pretty common to write tools or extensions for streamlining work on larger projects anyways. The only potential downsides to that are the time commitment and any potential knowledge barriers (though I’m sure if you run into any roadblocks, you could get help for them). If you’re not on a tight deadline then I’d say go for it, maybe you can even make a few bucks selling the program when it’s functional.

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I agree with eriophora that the main character is a bit off-putting, I think she looks younger than intended due to the “cute/chibi” look of the face and the shortness of the torso/midsection, yet she has a thick curvy waist like a mature woman. I’m not sure your intention of a “thin, fragile and young girl” is coming across clearly (she looks quite strong, actually). Is she supposed to be petite? If she’s supposed to be the more innocent and frailer girl in comparison to the demoness having a mature and curvy appearance then these adjustments can help get that across, although this is the opinion of someone who hasn’t seen any of the other characters’ portraits, only what you’ve shown in this thread. To accomplish this, you could probably raise the eyeline, make the face a little longer and slimmer, extend the torso, and narrow her hips/slim her legs.

As for the sprite you’re working on, I think it looks pretty great overall, the only thing particularly standing out to me is that the arms don’t have as many inbetweens as the rest of her body. You could add one or two more frames there, but you might have to subpixel as mentioned earlier in the thread.

What URL are you using? It needs to be the direct link to the image, hosted somewhere on the internet. You need a link that has the file extension at the end of it (.gif, .png, .jpg, etc.). Then you need to wrap the URL in BBcode img tags.

Example:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/7tTWfa4.png[/img]
Gives you: