[C&C] orc head

[startselect]

I'm trying to make an orc head that covers the same pixels as my "regular" head (top). I tried two times, I like the features of the second head (right) more but it feels a little gritty, I tried to get a lot of features in there, started with blocking them out (bottom right). I'd like the jaw to feel bigger without moving the eyes upwards (they'd get covered by various half-helmets) and the whole sprite to feel "cleaner". Any suggestions? Thx!

note: the ears can be wider than the "regular" head, they are like a haircut and certain helmets allow hair (half-helmets, crowns etc) and others disable the haircut when equipped (full knight helmet etc)

[MysteryMeat]

Too many colors, it obscured a lot of detail! I spent some time reworking a lot here, mostly the browline on the rightmost one and the eye placement and teeth on the left. I tried to give the left one a friendlier "shopkeeper" type of vibe with more of a pleasant smirk, while the right one has more of an angry warrior glare.
I also tweaked the human head to my specifications, because I could :p

Hopefully you can clean more comparing the two than I'm able to describe in my current state though, I'm a bit delirious atm.

[Cyangmou]

yeah definitely too many colors, try to go with a ramp of 4-5 colors, that usually is enough to work with and looks great.
Also for this tiny resolution the less colors you use the cleaner it will look, because what makes it noisy is that you don't have any flat planes of colors in it.
A clean outline style also can help to make character parts pop.

You can get cleaner images by starting with a shilouette and adding light, then midtones and then highlights.
Tiny details like eyes and teeth can get added anytime in the process, just make sure they contrast nicely.

[startselect]

Thank you so much for the tutorial! I tried applying it with my face size limitations. Might be some of the best stuff I've ever pixelled! Will be applying that technique to everything now! Due to helmets I can't change the top curvature of the head but the jaw is ok to fiddle with a bit so I tried giving him a bigger jaw like I imagined, turned out great, looks dumb like a sack of potatoes which feels perfect! Limiting color count and applying "light" on a dark silhouette is def great advice, but a thing you might not think about which is so hard for me is picking colors, your five seem to have the same intensity while my colors are sort of all over the place. I tried swapping the colors with the ones I was using and the face looked almost glowing. Any tips on how to select "blander" colors and also have them the same blandness? (maybe there's even a proper word for what I'm trying to describe)