Well, you don't really have to do that for
each shade.
Taking a close look at the sprite I see a lot of colors you only used once. For example, a light purple on the cuff of the jeans (which was gotten rid of), and a slightly-lighter-than-the-darkest-skin-tone on... the ear, I think it was. Also got a bit more economical here; such as using a darker jean color to fill in for the lightest shirt color, using the lightest hair color as the whites of the eyes, and using the third lightest hair color to bridge the gap between the sharply contrasting skin colors (sort of). Yes, and they're both still yellow! But tell me if you notice at a glance.
Also got rid of a couple of colors you didn't use much, and didn't need. Ex., getting rid of the darkest eye color and further making the eye color a bit brighter, to focus equal attention to them and not just the hair. To make up for that, I put in that extra shade onto the hair I kept talking about. It's about the largest blot of shade and color in the sprite (aside from the shirt, but it's pretty dark), and needs more attention than the rest.
It was a bit hard to define the gender. I can't really imagine a guy with so much eyeliner (or something that suggests it), even in the wacky world of manga/anime...Actually, that might be a bit more plausible, albeit for reasons undefined. But I'll just go with somewhere towards female. My edit does look a bit more feminine after all. I suppose because I made it slightly thinner.
Had a tiny problem with the way the arms were bent. Even when I suggested more of a bent stance, that didn't really look right, to be honest. So I tried doing it another way--the sprite's left arm is bent perpendicular to the right arm, if not a bit straighter. I think it looks better, pertaining more to the rules of foreshortening. Foreshortening, well, you might describe it as when perspective makes a limb seem shorter than it actually is. Put your arm straight out in front of you, and I think you'll see what I mean. If not, oh well.
On that note, last but not least, fixed the angle of the head by making the right side (the sprite's left side) flatter, to give the illusion of the head being round and looking off to the right. It was actually rather easy, just selecting, dragging it off to the left, and pushing around a few pixels to finish it off.
