Brace yourself for constructive criticism dump.

Your sprite is extremely square and boxy at this point. You are relying too much on including what you know about human anatomy instead of implying the character you want to show.
Head [Check]
Shoulders [Check]
Torso[Check]
Arms[Check]
Legs [Check]

What are the key features of your sprite. He is bald. He has a gray beard. His interesting clothes and bare feet.

If those are what you want people to see you should focus on them. In this way your composition will feel much more acceptable to a viewer.

You have some general perspective errors on each version.   Your pose will only truly work in a straight forward perspective as you oriented him this way.


In this edit I tried to show you a couple things quickly. First how to emphasize your key points by focusing on them rather than lines. The head beard and outfit are key elements taking center stage here.
I assumed you wanted a muscled physique based on the low level of clothing and the broad shoulders.

A few other things.
Yellow-- depicts your light source and the angles it flows.
Green-- is indicating banding you created with your shading. The human eye picks out striped patterns really quickly and these sorts of things draw attention in pixel art really heavily.
Blue--Your beard had a really blocky look to it the way you placed your shading.
Red--The checkerboard pattern on your pants is really distracting and eye catching.
Orange--Some general indications of how your perspective and posture is off. The feet are angled and offset but the head is straight on angle to the side.
Purple--The gap between his legs runs so far up his rear end that it makes him look as if he is without one here.

Other things to bombard you with are color selection choices. Your entire sprite is created with very similar tones that blend together well. Your contrast levels are too close in general on the shading/highlighting.
I moved the color of the brown cloth to a more reddened brown to pull it further from the skin tones and lightened up the overall complexion of the character a bit to further separate the two.