Lets leave the animation aside for now.
Well, the first thing i could tell you is that you post some pictures of your backdrops/stages, right now i think that maybe you are going after a soft/child-drawing like look reminiscent of the Snes game
http://sourceforge.net/dbimage.php?id=12201(for example).
If thats the case, the eyes and mouth of the character is contrasting too much with the rest of the character, and you should replace that colour with a softer more similar to the character colour.
In any case, the actual colours of the character are too pale, and you should up the contrast between them at least a notch, the actual outline of the character may need to be a little more noticeable also depending on the backdrop.
The perspective seems a bit weird to me also, since the character seems to be facing a sideview, yet on the animation, we see the legs on a different perspective.
You should also consider a slight hue variation on the colours, wich tend to make the sprites more rich visually.
After that maybe, we could take on that animation, but like i said on the start, leave it aside from now.
If you need any more asistance, im happy to do some edits if you want.
-Krut