Well, I'm not going to reduce the color count.  I'm happy that I was actually able to keep it that low.  And I'm too lazy to go back and fix the sprite, but I will keep all that advice in mind for next time.

One of the reasons the face looks so different is because I finished the face before I started the body.

The face looks rele good! the bodys O.K..but could need a little work. and work on the colors o]and shadong (not on face :P)

ok, first off: the pose. Honestly, if you stood like that, you'd probably be about to fall over. The left leg looks like it goes down somewhat steeply and then somehow magically changes positions right before the knee cap. I hope you can understand that, basically look at the angle of the leg and then at the angle of the tunic and his waist and see that htye really don't match. He's also just leaning to the side in general and it gives him a VERY akward pose. The angle of his arm just looks wrong as well, in my opinon.

As far as the face goes, I think the eyes are a bit to far up and close to the roots of his hair. Also work on the shading, as far as I can tell, the light source is coming from the right side of the image, but it can be pretty difficult to be certain. You could probably cut down on the color count quite a bit, and you really need to cut down on the contrast, especially on his tunic-unless there's some powerful lighting, in which case more shading would be needed.

Did you really used 24 colors for that o_o