This is a fragment of what I planned to be a story (something halfway between a Russian fairy tale and No Country for Old Men) illustrated with pixel art.

Bigger version
here.
It took me a surprising amount of time to create, and - as you can probably see - it includes a wide variety of rookie mistakes (the horn, in particular, is banded like hell, and I kept the original outline I used).
Anticipating criticism,
here are some of my attempts at anti-aliasing. The first one on the left is the original (keeping the outline), the second one includes anti-aliasing of the facial features but not the horn, and the last two are my attempts at anti-aliasing the horn (admittedly, they're horrible, in part because I got tired and did a bit of a half-assed job).