My first "detailed" sprite character

[Death Meastro]

I was once apart of creating a video game during my senior year of high school for a competition, I got to be the graphic artist and I learned so much about pixel art. Out of all of the schools and teams that competed we took 7th at nationals. But I see that art now and I want to revamp and see about finishing the game just as a hobby. As the title of this post says, this is my first detailed sprite and I need some major feedback and advice on how to continue this piece. Thanks again guys!                             

             

[Pix3M]

I have no idea what I'm doing.




If the image is too small, just click and it zooms in for you.

[Seiseki]

Try shading larger areas with the same color and use the contrast between colors to make the different parts stand out instead of outlines.

[Death Meastro]

Pix3m, that looks pretty nifty, I'm not for sure if you could tell the hair was a long pony tail though ha ^^ And I'll try that Seiseki. Thanks for the quick response guys!

[Death Meastro]

Btw Seiseki, what image size did you use? I used 32x32 and yours is just a hair bigger (no pun intended XD)

[Seiseki]

Btw Seiseki, what image size did you use? I used 32x32 and yours is just a hair bigger (no pun intended XD)

Yeah, added more height to add in more hair and get a better perspective.

[Death Meastro]

I'm still learning a bit about importing images into the code of a program, but is that possible/efficient for a game?

[Pix3M]

Pix3m, that looks pretty nifty, I'm not for sure if you could tell the hair was a long pony tail though ha ^^ And I'll try that Seiseki. Thanks for the quick response guys!

Then I disagree with the character design. 

Often you want to think about what their silhouettes look like. Remember those "Who's that pokemon!" minigames? I went with spiky hair because it creates a more interesting-looking character.

[Seiseki]

I'm still learning a bit about importing images into the code of a program, but is that possible/efficient for a game?

There aren't any technical difficulties with it, not anymore at least. It might have been different 15 years ago
And if you're having 32x32 tiles I recommend the sprites to be taller, maybe around 32x48.

[Death Meastro]

Heres the result, I am aiming for a Seiken Densetu look or feel on my characters so I continually compared my art to to Duran from Seiken Densetu 3. Let me know what you think!