Hi. I would like to ask for a little help regarding on how different I sprite. Here's the style that I currently sprite:

As you can see it's heavily based off of CvS with no true distinction; it's just smaller and prolly less pleasing to the eye. I want to change that, but I'm not sure how since I've sprited like this for quite some time. So I'm gonna try and experiment a little using a sprite that I just made, but didn't shade:

The WIP is on the right. The base colors are just colors from the sprite on the left and aren't final. I want to make sure everything about the sprite in unshaded form looks readable. The main thing Is the face. I'm not sure if it looks good or not. I think everything else looks great, but that may be just me. So, what do I improve?

Start with your outline colours. It's difficult to read any information conveyed by the outline when it's the same value as or lighter than the interior colours.

The nose doesn't read well, it looks like a diagonal line. Maybe don't have it outlined at all, and instead use a highlight to show its location?

The outline colors I use to help separate detail. They're not final, actually, but that's advice is great when I actually start. And yeah, A highlight for the nose might work better than what I usually do.

Finished the face, but I'm stomped on how to to do the rest to make it stand out.

Decided to redo the pose and shaded it. Is there anything specific that you guys would like to suggest?