My first pixel fanart (and pixel artwork)

[YellowRaven]

Ok so, I read all the rules (and my hands are sweating a bit)...this here is my very first pixel art work, I thought it would be a good exercise to start with pokemon, probably because it was the pixel game I played the most and I feel very familiar with it.
I didn't want to copy the existing sprites nor retrace an original artwork. I have used an official pokemon art image as reference and an original pokemon sprite always and only as reference for the outline colors (somehow I felt weak for doing this...) but I didn't use the color palette from such sprite. I watched a lot of tutorials in the last week and felt a bit lost, I think I may have started to pick up a bit the basic concepts but at some point I tried to keep in mind too many rules and felt frustrated with an original drawing of mine...so I chose to exercise. Still I feel the sprite is quite unappealing...and general feedback might help me a bit.



P.S. Sorry for the wall of text...

[EvilEye]

*Rough edit*
Needs better lighting / shadows. It's pretty good for a first pixel art. I'd argue it needs more colors but maybe that's the pokemon style.

[YellowRaven]

*Rough edit*
Needs better lighting / shadows. It's pretty good for a first pixel art. I'd argue it needs more colors but maybe that's the pokemon style.

I did try to go a bit for the original pokemon style (though I was afraid to use too many colors on the leaf and left it at that).
Seeing your edit helped me a lot actually! Is great to see how colors can make an image a lot more dynamic.

I shall work on it to improve it, thanks again!

[YellowRaven]

I have updates my sprite, I think it looks a bit more "alive" now