Whenever I see someone use a good skin palette I always try and use it for something, in this case, Mr. Larwick's palette.
Started off with the face, I wanted a beefy lookin dude from the beginning. Gave him some scars on the right side, added in an arctic BG. And thats it. I wanted to have a spear/sword/mace/something hanging from his shoulder but decided it would just be too much "guy" in the image.
The following keywords are used to help with the Pixel Joint search tool and to help search engines with appropriate key phrases. Make sure to take some time and add keywords to your pixel art submissions. It actually helps!
um, too much dither for my taste.