Hey Twirly, good start! This character is quite cute. I think you even analyzed the problems with him pretty good too.
Here is how I would improve this sprite, and your sprites in general:
Don't rely on black lines to give shape to everything. Black lines on the inside of the sprite tend to clutter everything up, especially in small sprites like this. I had the same problem initially, but you just have to realize that you are not drawing with a pencil, you are painting with pixels. So you essentially need to define shapes with the colors you are using, not lines. If you look down at my edit, you see that I placed shapes of pixels of different colors next to each other to differentiate different parts of the body. Like I put a blob of dark blue coming out of the mid tone blue of his jacket to show his back arm a little, and it is distinguishable without any lines.
Try and use some shading. Not all styles use shading, but it can't hurt to know how to do it. Just think of each piece of the sprite as a simple shape (cylinder, sphere, etc...) and shade them accordingly, with the same light source. This will scrape you by on small and simple stuff. Just don't pillow shade (look it up on these forums).
The perspective doesn't seem too off to me, I think it's mainly just his arms are messed up. He does seem rigid, and this is for three reasons: his shoulders are undefined, and look like they are too far foreward over his hips. His head is too far forward, over his shoulders. Finally, his arms are not hanging naturally, they are hanging straight down and even back a little. Plus his left arm should not be so far out from his body, maybe only the bottom of the arm should be hanging forward, while the upper arm is back with the shoulders.
Well here is the edit (it is a bit crappy, I didn't make the arms look totally natural, and I spent only a little time on the face) hope some of this helps:
